Anxiety Gives Priority to Anticipation of Threatening Events

Abstract

Reading times were collected to assess the probability and time course of inferences predictive of danger as a function of anxiety. Participants high or low in trait anxiety read (a) context sentences suggesting threat-related or nonthreat outcomes of events, followed by (b) disambiguating sentences in which a target word confirmed or disconfirmed the predicted outcome. The results revealed that low anxiety facilitated processing of nonthreat outcomes, whereas high anxiety facilitated processing of threatening outcomes. Furthermore, these selective effects occurred on a posttarget region of the disambiguating sentence; in contrast, all participants—regardless of anxiety level and threat content of stimuli—showed facilitation when reading the final region of that sentence. These findings indicate that anxiety leads one to prioritize (i. e., increased probability and reduced time) the anticipation of threat-related events.