Classification and assessment of fear and anxiety in personality and psychopathology

Abstract

We examine fear and anxiety in the context of structural models of personality (the five-factor model, or FFM) and psychopathology (the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology, or HiTOP); we also highlight important issues related to their assessment. Anxiety is a sustained, future-oriented response to potential threat. Trait measures of anxiety represent a core facet within the broader domain of neuroticism in the FFM. Anxiety-related symptoms are indicators of the distress subfactor within the internalizing spectrum in HiTOP. In contrast, fear is a brief, present-focused response to an acute threat. We distinguish between two ways of assessing individual differences in fear. The first type assesses phobic responses to specific stimuli. Phobia measures are moderately correlated with measures of neuroticism in the FFM and define the fear subfactor of internalizing in HiTOP. The second type assesses individual differences in harm avoidance versus risk taking. Measures of risk taking (i.e., low fear) are moderately related to disinhibition/low conscientiousness and antagonism/low agreeableness in the FFM and are indicators of the externalizing superspectrum in HiTOP.