Which term refers to participants' anxiety that their performance is being evaluated?

• A. Evaluation apprehension
• B. Social desirability
• C. Experimenter expectancy
• D. Demand characteristics

Answer: (A)

Evaluation apprehension is the anxiety that participants feel that others are evaluating their performance. This concern tends to increase arousal, which can boost performance on simple tasks but hinder it on more complex ones, especially when others are present and seen as evaluators. This directly captures the stress of being judged during an assessment, making it the best fit for describing participants’ worry about being evaluated. The other terms describe different phenomena: social desirability is about the urge to present oneself in a favorable light, experimenter expectancy is when the researcher's beliefs influence outcomes, and demand characteristics are cues in the study that lead participants to guess the hypothesis and adjust behavior accordingly.