A Racing Heart, Rattling Knees, and Ruminative Thoughts: Defining, Explaining, and Treating Public Speaking Anxiety

Abstract

Considered by many to be the foundation upon which our discipline was built, the study of public speaking has evolved from its humble beginnings into a vast literature of experimental and expositional studies. The focus of research on public speaking has primarily been to discover the antecedents, causes, and consequences of anxiety associated with anticipating or presenting a public speech in order to prescribe treatment. The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive review of the literature on public speaking anxiety (PSA) to serve as a foundation for future theory building and practice. Toward this end, PSA is defined and a typology of PSA constructs is developed. Then, using these constructs, research exploring the etiology of PSA is reviewed. A third section reviews techniques used to reduce PSA.

Keywords:

• Public Speaking Anxiety
• Speaking Fear
• Remediation
• Arousal
• Communication Apprehension

Notes

1. Although public speaking has been classified as a subtype of social anxiety disorder (for review see Cox, Clara, Sareen, & Stein, 2008), the most current edition of the DSM (APA, 2000) states “performance anxiety, stage fright, and shyness in social situations that involve unfamiliar people are common and should not be diagnosed as Social Phobia” (p. 455). Readers are referred elsewhere for reviews of social phobia research (Barlow, 2008; Ruscio et al., 2008).

2. The ANS is one branch of the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS). The PNS primarily permits the brain and spinal cord to function together, and the systems of the PNS (i.e., somatic and ANS) are made possible because of a large system of spinal and cranial nerves. The ANS controls bodily activities that are generally thought to operate outside conscious control (e.g., blood pressure), the main function of which “is to keep a constant body environment in the face of internal or external changes” (Andreassi, 2007, p. 65). The ANS is divided into the Parasympathetic Nervous System which is dominant when a person is at rest and the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) which is dominant when a person is mobile or aroused. Heart rate and BP are measures of both subsystems, whereas SC is solely a measure of the SNS. Certainly the organization of the nervous system is not this straightforward (e.g., there are parts of the ANS contained in and under the control of the central nervous systems, e.g., the hypothalamus region of the brain), and the functions of the ANS and its component systems are much more complex. Interested readers should consult more thorough treatments of psychophysiology (Cacioppo, Tassinary, & Berntson, 2007).

3. Although summation can be the direct result of speaking experiences (Low & Sheets, 1951), it does not necessarily have to be as individuals most fearful of speaking tend to be novices (Gilkinson, 1943; Jensen, 1976). As Gilkinson (1943) proposes, general social anxiety can become conditioned by one or more unrelated events and later become associated with public speaking.

4. Based on the same principles as SD, “flooding” exposes participants to a vast amount of aversive stimuli from the beginning of therapy as opposed to a hierarchical order from least to most aversive (Marshall, Parker, & Hayes, 1982). In the case of public speaking, a therapist might have a highly anxious speaker attempt a speech in front a large crowd and require that performance until the speaker showed no signs of anxiety.

5. Of course, feedback does not necessarily have to deal with skills per se. For instance, in an early experimental study, Motley (1976) randomly assigned undergraduates to one of three speaking conditions where a confederate either provided (1) no feedback about a speaker's HR or indicated a speaker's HR was (2) particular low or (3) particularly high. Speakers informed their HR was particularly low exhibited a faster linear decline in their actual HR over a 4–6 minute speech than speakers informed that their HR was either particularly high or speakers given no feedback. Although this procedure has yet to be tested as a classroom remediation technique, Motley's findings do suggest that using false physiological feedback may help students.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Graham D. Bodie

Graham Bodie is in the Department of Communication Studies, The Louisiana State University