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The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory is a self-report, 40-item psychological test for adults designed to measure feelings of immediate anxiety that an individual feels at the current moment (state anxiety) and dispositional anxiety (trait anxiety).
Introduction
When measuring anxiety, it is critical to make the distinction between anxiety as an immediate emotional state versus anxiety as a personality trait. In the creation of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), Charles Spielberger and his co-authors conceptualized state anxiety as aversive, conscious feelings of nervousness, tension, apprehension, and worry experienced in the immediate moment which are associated with arousal of the autonomic nervous system (Spielberger et al. 1983). For example, someone driving a car pulled over by the police for speeding would likely experience a high level of state anxiety. Trait anxiety was conceptualized as...
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Sydeman, S. (2020). State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_950
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_950
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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