Speak Up! Studying the Interplay of Individual and Contextual Factors to Physiological-Based Models of Public Speaking Anxiety

Public speaking is key to effectively exchanging ideas, persuading others, and making tangible impact. Yet, public speaking anxiety ranks as a top social phobia in the U.S., especially among first generation college students, and those who belong to underrepresented or minority groups. This paper uses physiological signals captured from wearable devices to detect self-reported state-based anxiety during a real-life public speaking encounter. Individual and contextual factors moderating the association between physiological reactivity and state-based public speaking anxiety are taken into account. Such factors include indices of trait-based anxiety, level of preparation, and gender. Results highlight the significance of including such factors for detecting public speaking anxiety and indicate that the proposed approach can yield up to 0.79 (p<; 0.01) Spearman's correlation measures between the actual and estimated state-based anxiety scores. Implications of these results will enable researchers to better understand antedecedents and causes of public speaking anxiety contributing to behavioral interventions.