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The study’s objective was to ascertain the connection between secondary school students' test anxiety, academic self-concept, motivation and academic performance in mathematics. The difference between the academic performances of male and female secondary school students who exhibit high and low test anxiety, academic self-concept and motivation levels in mathematics.

Four hypotheses and four research questions were adopted. The design is a correlation. 42,299 mathematics students in senior school year two (SS2) made up the research population. A sample of 1,650 students was selected through a multi-stage sampling procedure. The main instruments used were the Mathematics Test Anxiety Questionnaire (MTAQ), Academic Self-Concept Questionnaire (ASQ) and Academic Motivation Questionnaire (AMQ) and students’ math scores. These instruments were validated by three experts and the reliability coefficients of 0.69, 0.68 and 0.68 were obtained for MTAQ, ASQ and AMQ, respectively, using Cronbach alpha. Pearson product moment correlation was used to analyze the data.

The study’s results showed a correlation between secondary school students' academic performance in mathematics and test anxiety, academic self-concept and motivation. There was a significant difference between secondary school male and female students' test anxiety; there was a significant difference between secondary school male and female students' self-concept and academic performance in mathematics, and there was a significant difference between secondary school male and female students' motivation and academic performance in mathematics.

The major contribution of this study is to investigate the connection between test anxiety, academic self-concept motivation and students’ mathematics performance. There is a difference between psychological variables, gender and mathematics performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore EFL reading anxiety of first-year undergraduate engineering students and its effect on their reading performance in a public sector engineering university in Pakistan. It specifically aims to explore their top-down, bottom-up and classroom EFL reading anxiety.

Data for the present study were collected from 200 first-year engineering students to explore their reading anxiety. A 20-item questionnaire developed by Zoghi and Alivandivafa (2014) was used to measure students’ EFL reading anxiety, while an IELTS academic reading test was used to measure their reading performance. The data were analyzed through exploratory factorial analysis and multiple regression analysis to determine which type of reading anxiety has a significant effect on students’ reading performance.

It was found that the bottom-up reading anxiety and the classroom reading anxiety have a significant negative impact on the reading performance of the first-year undergraduate engineering students of a Pakistani university. However, top-down reading anxiety has an insignificant negative impact on the reading performance of university students.

The data for the current study were drawn from one Pakistani public sector engineering university, and all the students were first-year undergraduates. The data were collected through a self-reported questionnaire and IELTS (academic) reading test. Some of the students may be unfamiliar with the IELTS test pattern, so their reading performance might have been affected.

Teachers should adopt such a methodology in their EFL classrooms which helps students reduce their reading anxiety. Reading texts must be selected considering the proficiency level of students, and reading strategies must be explicitly taught to reduce bottom-up and top-down reading anxieties. Teachers should create a positive learning environment in their classroom by encouraging students to make an effort to improve their reading skills in order to deal with classroom reading anxiety. Students must be explained that they should help one another rather than ridiculing each other’s reading mistakes. Differentiated instruction can also be adopted to facilitate weak readers. The teachers can provide additional/out of the class support to weak readers in order to help them deal with reading anxiety.

The EFL reading anxiety among university students in the Pakistani context has received little attention from the researchers. Furthermore, although the impact of EFL reading anxiety on EFL students’ reading performance has been explored previously, the impact of three types of EFL reading anxiety on EFL learners’ reading performance has not been adequately investigated.

This paper considers the association between instruction style and student academic performance, and draws from recent laboratory research where accounting student performance was found to be closely associated with the effect of instructor behaviour upon student task motivation and deep learning. Drawing upon emergent motivation theory, we discuss the proposition that appropriate instructor behaviours, through their positive effect upon student task motivation, anxiety and emergent confidence, can induce an upward performance shift, or interrupt a downward shift. A performance spiral model is modelled whereby students carry with them the learning responses from repeated good (or poor) performance into subsequent task settings, with corresponding accentuated effects upon anxiety and motivation.

This study examines the role of anxiety in kaizen behaviour and performance by empirically testing the influence of personal anxiety (state and trait) on individual kaizen behaviours (rule adherence, initiative and perseverance of effort), which, in turn, affect individual kaizen performance.

The data were obtained from a survey of 552 employees of four companies in Japan and analysed using structural equation modelling.

The results show that state anxiety has a significantly positive effect on rule adherence and kaizen performance. Trait anxiety positively influences employees' initiative and perseverance but has a significant negative effect on kaizen performance.

This study contributes to kaizen and continuous improvement theory by focussing on individual kaizen, which is considered to be as important as organisation-level kaizen and investigating the relevance of personal anxiety in individual kaizen behaviours and kaizen performance.

This study aims to assess the negative aspect of social media use among college students in India. A conceptual model showing the relationship between excessive social media use (ESMU) and academic performance of college students has been developed and tested. Further, the moderating role of psychological well-being and avoidance strategies were investigated.

A survey instrument was developed, and data was collected from 557 college students from higher educational institutions in southern India. First, the psychometric properties of the measures were tested using the Lisrel software for covariance-based structural equation modeling. Second, the structural model was tested by using PROCESS macros.

The results reveal that ESMU is a precursor to anxiety and academic performance. The findings also indicate that anxiety mediates the relationship between ESMU and academic performance. Psychological well-being and avoidance strategies were significant moderators in the relationship between ESMU and anxiety.

The multi-layered conceptual model was developed and tested in the context of a developing country (India) and investigated the effect of ESMU by college students on their academic performance and anxiety. The three-way interaction between psychological well-being (first moderator), avoidance strategies (second moderator) and ESMU influencing academic performance mediated through anxiety is studied in this research. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, such a moderated moderated-mediation in connection with social media use is a unique contribution of this study.

With a foundation in conservation of resources theory, the purpose of this paper is to unpack the relationship between employees’ self-efficacy and job performance, investigating the mediating role of job-related anxiety and the moderating role of perceived workplace incivility.

Survey data were collected from employees and their supervisors in Pakistani organizations.

An important reason that employees’ self-efficacy enhances their job performance is that they experience less anxiety while undertaking their daily job tasks. This mediating role of job-related anxiety is particularly salient to the extent that employees believe that they are the victims of uncivil behaviors.

Organizations should note that the anxiety-mitigating effect of self-efficacy is particularly strong for generating adequate performance to the extent that rude and discourteous behaviors cannot be completely avoided in the workplace.

This study establishes a more complete understanding of the benefits of employees’ self-efficacy by revealing how reduced worries about their organizational functioning represent critical mechanisms that connect this personal resource to higher job performance, as well as by showing how employees’ perceptions of workplace incivility invigorate this process.

This study develops and validates a theoretical model of real-time mobile connectivity, examining how employees' perceptions of their relationship with supervisors influence their emotional experiences. Through quasi-experiments, the authors investigate the behavioral patterns and emotional responses associated with real-time mobile connectivity in organizations, with a focus on messaging apps that indicate message read status. Specifically, they explore how supervisors' attentiveness or inattentiveness in mobile connectivity impacts emotional ambivalence (anxiety and pride) among subordinates. Additionally, they examine the downstream effects of this emotional ambivalence on employees' workplace thriving and job performance across various dimensions.

To address the paradox of real-time mobile connectivity, a quasi-experimental design involving 320 team members from 46 teams was implemented. Multi-level structural equation modeling was employed to analyze within-person variance and evaluate the proposed hypotheses.

The findings indicate that employees who do not receive timely indications from their supervisors are more likely to experience elevated levels of anxiety, while those who receive prompt indications experience a sense of pride. Moreover, the indirect effects of the real-time mobile connectivity paradox on employee performance, mediated by anxiety (negatively) and pride (positively), are fully explained through workplace thriving.

This study provides insights into the emotional ambivalence experienced in the workplace due to real-time mobile connectivity, highlighting its implications for organizational competitiveness. Integrating resource conservation theory and cognitive appraisal theory of emotion, the study explores the mediating role of workplace thriving and the impact on employee performance through pride and anxiety. Generalizability requires considering organizational settings and cultural contexts while acknowledging limitations such as a focus on messaging apps and specific samples. Future research should explore these dynamics in diverse contexts and identify additional factors influencing the relationship between real-time mobile connectivity and employee outcomes.

This study provides valuable insights for managers regarding the significance of message indications, as their attentiveness can elicit emotional reactions from employees that subsequently impact workplace thriving and job performance.

This study pioneers the exploration of the paradox of real-time mobile connectivity in the workplace, uncovering the discrete emotions experienced by employees. Furthermore, it elucidates the subsequent opposing effects on workplace thriving and job performance, contributing to the existing literature and knowledge in this area.

The purpose of this chapter is to summarize and integrate a body of psychological literature regarding an individual difference related to the experience of anxiety that largely, and somewhat surprisingly, has been overlooked by organizational scientists. This variable, most often called social anxiety or social phobia, reflects a strong fear that one is in danger of behaving inappropriately, inadequately, or ineptly, with impending disastrous consequences such as rejection, humiliation, or ouster from a group (Trower & Gilbert, 1990). In providing a summary of the construct and ongoing investigations, the chapter offers ideas for future research into how this important variable may influence behaviors at work.

This pilot study aims to examine the prevalence of test anxiety and its interplay with attitudes, confidence, efficacy, academic performance and socio-demographic factors within the domain of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses.

The authors employed a quantitative, cross-sectional design with 549 sixth-grade students from public lower secondary schools in Prishtina, Kosovo, using the Student Attitudes Toward STEM Survey (S-STEM) for middle/high schools and the test anxiety questionnaire.

Over 70% of Kosovo's sixth-grade students reported moderate to severe test anxiety. The age of students was found to be inversely related to academic performance in STEM. The father's employment was associated with favorable STEM attitudes, confidence, efficacy and academic performance. Having a personal study environment was connected with favorable STEM attitudes, confidence and efficacy in STEM, whereas access to technology was associated with positive academic performance. Test anxiety, academic performance and personal study space predicted students' attitudes, confidence and efficacy in STEM and 21st-century learning.

Educational institutions should prioritize student well-being. By addressing test anxiety, these institutions can create supportive learning environments that improve attitudes, confidence and efficacy in STEM fields. These efforts are crucial for STEM career development and student success in the 21st-century workforce.

The current study findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the factors influencing STEM student engagement and performance, highlighting the importance of addressing test anxiety for positive learning outcomes while emphasizing the need to consider socio-economic and contextual factors in education.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine how psychological power explains dual conflicting emotions, influences and jeopardises knowledge sharing and eventually affects job performance. Specifically, this study argues that psychological power can induce feelings of pride and anxiety, which have opposite downstream effects on employees’ knowledge sharing and tasks, proactive and affiliative (TPA) performances.

This study tested the model using three waves of multi-source data from 46 teams and 357 respondents in the information technology and software industry in China. This study used multilevel structural equation modelling with Mplus 7.4 to examine the within-level team variance and thereby estimated the confidence intervals for the direct and indirect paths.

The results indicate that increased psychological power can cause contradictory emotions (i.e. pride and anxiety). Pride positively mediates the indirect influence of psychological power on knowledge sharing and TPA performance, while anxiety negatively mediates the above-mentioned indirect relationships.

This study provides a novel perspective on how psychological forces shape people’s emotional experiences and subsequently their motivation to share knowledge and job performance. By integrating the existing power literature rooted in the approach/inhibition theory of power and cognitive appraisal theory of emotion, we identify two discrete emotions as underlying mechanisms between increased psychological power and motivation to share knowledge and job performance.

This research provides insights for managers regarding the ways in which psychological power can stimulate individuals to engage in negative behaviour towards others. Managers, in turn, must consider self-regulation to control this negative impact.

This study is among the earliest to examine the role of discrete positive and negative emotions caused by increased psychological power, which subsequently affect knowledge sharing and TPA performance.