Relevance of “Needs” and “Press” to Anxiety, Alienation, and GPA

Abstract

The focus of this investigation was to suggest that dissonance between an individual’s needs and his perceptions of the environment is related to anxiety, alienation, and discrepant GPA. Three hundred randomly sampled eleventh year students from three high schools responded to revised versions of Stern’s High School Characteristics Index, his Activities Index, the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, and Dean’s Scale of Alienation. Males and females were examined differentially. Results of a polynomial regression analysis indicated that dissonance and anxiety are significantly related at the quadratic level (F = 3. 931); anxiety and GPA are significantly related for males at the linear level (F =3. 936) and for females at the cubic level (F = 4. 182); and alienation and GPA are related at the linear level (F = 5. 159).