From Worry to Forgetting: The Effects of Anxiety Level on Everyday Memory Performance

Abstract

The present study investigated the relationship between General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Prospective and Retrospective Memory Difficulties (PRMQ), with attention to gender differences in the strength of this association. Drawing on attentional control theory, which posits that anxiety consumes executive resources and thereby impairs memory-related processes (Eysenck & Derakshan, 2011), it was hypothesized that higher anxiety levels would predict greater everyday memory difficulties, and that this effect would be more pronounced in men than in women. Data were collected from 169 participants (34 men, 135 women). A series of multivariate and regression analyses were conducted. Hotelling’s T² test indicated a significant multivariate effect, T² = 1616.55, F(1, 168) = 1616.55, p < .001 (Table 7), confirming that the joint distribution of anxiety and memory scores deviated substantially from the null hypothesis. Pearson correlations revealed a moderate positive association between GAD and PRMQ in the overall sample, r = .45, p < .01 (Table 8). Regression analyses further demonstrated that GAD significantly predicted PRMQ difficulties, accounting for 20% of the variance, R² = .20, Adjusted R² = .20, F(1, 167) = 42.26, p < .001 (Tables 9–10). The unstandardized regression coefficient indicated that each one-unit increase in GAD was associated with nearly a one-point increase in PRMQ difficulties, B = 0.97, β = .45, t(167) = 6.50, p < .001, 95% CI [0.68, 1.27] (Table 11). Residual diagnostics confirmed that assumptions of normality and independence were met (Table 12; Graphs 1–2). Gender-specific analyses revealed notable differences. Among men, the correlation between GAD and PRMQ was strong, r = .70, p < .01 (Table 13), whereas among women, the association was moderate, r = .41, p < .01 (Table 14). Boxplots (Graph 3) illustrated greater variability and more extreme values in men’s scores, suggesting heightened vulnerability to the cognitive consequences of anxiety. These findings support the hypothesis that gender moderates the anxiety–memory relationship, with men exhibiting a stronger effect. Overall, the results confirm that anxiety is a significant predictor of everyday memory difficulties, consistent with prior meta-analytic evidence linking anxiety to impairments in working memory capacity (Moran, 2016). The gendered patterns observed here align with research suggesting that men may experience stronger neurocognitive consequences of stress and anxiety (Shors, 2002), whereas women may rely on coping strategies that buffer these effects (Matud, 2004). The study underscores the importance of integrating emotional and cognitive domains in psychological research and highlights the need for gender-sensitive interventions to mitigate the impact of anxiety on everyday memory functioning.