60 female college students were selected on the basis of extreme scores on the Dogmatism Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory Trait Anxiety (A-Trait) Scale to work on a computer-assisted learning task of difficult mathematical problems. Contrary to expectations, high and low dogmatic subjects, when controlled for A-Trait, did not differ in the level of state anxiety (A-State) displayed during the learning task. As hypothesized, high A-Trait subjects had significantly higher levels of A-State during the experiment than low A-Trait subjects. Neither A-Trait nor dogmatism was related to errors on the task. However, a significant interactive effect of mathematical ability and A-State on performance was observed. Consistent with drive theory, high A-State resulted in more errors for subjects of low mathematical ability but had no effect on the performance of subjects of high mathematical ability.
