Twenty high- and twenty low-test-anxious females performed a paired-associates task either alone or in the presence of an evaluative audience. One purpose of the study was to compare predictions generated from Zajonc's drive theory, Wine's cognitive-attentional model, and Carver and Scheier's cybernetic approach. Since the task was primarily composed of items in which the dominant response was initially incorrect, Zajonc's theory hypothesized that the audience would have a negative impact on the performance of both high- and low-test-anxious persons. Wine's analysis indicates that the spectator should have a more beneficial or less detrimental effect on the performance of low- than high- test-anxious individuals. Carver and Scheier's theory contends that the directional effects of an audience depend on expectation level. Since all subjects were led to anticipate success, their cybernetic interpretation predicts that the audience will facilitate the performance of high- as well as low-test-anxious persons
