SPEECH ANXIETY AFFECTS HOW PEOPLE PREPARE SPEECHES - A PROTOCOL ANALYSIS OF THE PREPARATION PROCESSES OF SPEAKERS

Why does public speaking anxiety lead people to present speeches of ju dged lower quality? Prior research suggests a number cf variables that might detrimentally affect the performance of highly anxious speakers when they present speeches. But does speech anxiety affect only prese ntation behavior, or does it also affect the ways in which people prep are their speeches? Measures of public speaking anxiety, and most text s focusing on presentational speaking, assume that the anxiety's effec t is limited to performance. In the current study we examine this noti on. Using a number of variables drawn from a conceptual model of the s peech preparation process, we first find that the way people go about preparing their speeches is meaningfully associated with the quality o f their presentation. Second, we discover that public speaking anxiety is significantly related to how people prepare speeches. People with high levels of speech anxiety engage in a variety of preparation actio ns that may limit the effectiveness of their presentations. When tile impact of speech anxiety is statistically removed from the preparation process, the relationship between preparation and speech quality is m uch smaller. In understanding how speech anxiety affects public presen tations, it is critical to examine not only what happens during the sp eech but also how the speech is prepared.