Social perception and anxiety in Nigerian and British students

The thesis reports a cross cultural study investigating some aspects of anxiety and social perception in British and Nigerian students. Five main questions were considered: 1. The level of social perception in both groups. 2. The level of anxiety in both groups. 3. The relationship between anxiety and social perception.4. The level of social perception and anxiety in the Nigerians as compared with a 'more favoured' foreign student group, viz. the Australians. 5. The levels of social perception and anxiety within the Nigerian group. Method Social perception is generally defined as every manner of social awareness of the Other. The area of 'awareness' under study in the present research involved specific opinions previously established as characteristics of the two groups.In measuring social perception, a more inclusive score was derived in place of the usual 'accuracy' score. This new score considered the 'inaccuracies' as well as the accuracies in a formula that gave credit to a willingness to suspend judgement in predicting the response of the Other. The Anxiety level was measured by the Cattell IPAT Anxiety Scale. This test measures Cattell's factorially independentanxiety response pattern,by combining five personality components that were found to be significantly related to the pattern. Findings The findings are as follows: The Nigerians score significantly lower on social perception and significantly higher on anxiety than the Australians and the British. Nigerians who have been in Britain for more than three years score significantly higher on social perception and significantly lower on anxiety than Nigerians who have been in Britain for three years and less.The relationship between social perception and anxiety is discussed in terms of Rokeach's view on the relationship of 'openess' and 'threat' to cognitive efficiency. It is argued that if the higher anxiety scores of the Nigerians indicate a greater sense of threat, then they are more 'closed' in their approach to cognitive problems, and this results in significantly lower social perception scores.The comparative results on the Nigerians and the Australians are in the predicted direction. The analysis of the cross sectional anxiety scores of the Nigerians reveals some differences from the usual pattern found in 'foreign' students, and some possible reasons for these differences are discussed.<p