through their attempts at competent task performance. The person’s subjec-
tive state may influence the efficiency and style of performance, including
performance on intellectual tasks. For example, high levels of distress and
worry are prone to be disruptive. However, the environment also influences
the person. Stress factors such as ambient temperature and noise, high work-
load, and feedback indicating success or failure change the person’s physio-
logical and subjective state.
Thus, the self-regulative process is dynamic. The person seeks to fulfill
personal goals, such as maintaining a sense of self-competence, within the
context of an environment that changes as a result of the person’s own efforts
at coping, and (in real-life) due to other, extraneous factors. This framework
for stress and performance differs from more traditional work in this area
(see Matthews, Davies, Westerman, & Stammers, 2000, for a review) that fo-
cuses primarily on stress as an influence on performance, neglecting the re-
verse influence. Consequently there are large experimental literatures on ef-
fects of stressors on performance such as noise, heat, vibration, etc., but
relatively few studies of effects of performance on stress. One exception is
provided by the test anxiety literature that describes both the effects of being
evaluated on anxiety and worry states, and the process by which the anxious
state interferes with attention and intellectual performance (Sarason & Sara-
son, 1990; Sarason et al., 1995; Zeidner, 1998).
Research in the first author’s laboratory has demonstrated how changes in
motivation, emotion and cognition are integrated via the self-regulative process.
Figure 6.7 shows subjective state responses to performing three tasks requiring
sustained attention: two laboratory vigilance tasks and a simulation of driving in
fatiguing conditions (Ns = 50, 99, 80). Figure 6.7a shows change in state from
pre-task to post-task, expressed in standardized units. Fatiguing tasks of this
kind consistently elicit decreased task engagement (e.g., Matthews, Campbell, et
al., 2002; Matthews & Desmond, 2002). Each task exhibits a coherent change in
primary states relating to different domains of the trilogy. Thus, decreased en-
ergy is accompanied by loss of concentration and motivation. High workload
tasks typically provoke increases in distress (Matthews et al., 2002). Figure 6.7b
shows data from three tasks that provoke such responses, including two labora-
tory tasks, and a simulation that required agents to reply to typical customer in-
quiries, by phone (Ns = 137, 50, 91). Changes in mood toward greater tension
and more unpleasant mood were accompanied by cognitions expressing loss of
confidence and perceived control.
The concept of coping is critical to the self-regulative process. The
transactional model of stress and coping (Lazarus, 1993) construes coping as
a process of transaction between a person and event that plays out across
time and changing circumstances. Accordingly, coping effectiveness must be
examined in the context in which stress occurs: “without information about
the social context we would have half the story” (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984,
162 MATTHEWS AND ZEIDNER