Interactions between anxiety and impulsive dimensions are differentially associated with experiential avoidance

Abstract

Anxiety and impulsivity often co-occur, but due to broad conceptualizations of impulsive behavior, it remains unclear whether anxiety could be positively associated with global impulsivity or specific facets of impulsivity. Negative urgency, or rash behavior that specifically occurs during negative emotional states, may provide common ground to examine the overlap between high anxiety and high impulsivity. Limited work has examined relationships between negative urgency and behavioral processes that are often associated with both anxiety and global impulsivity, such as experiential avoidance. In this study, we examined self-report data collected from a non-clinical sample of adult participants (n = 589) to test relationships between anxiety and experiential avoidance through both negative urgency and global impulsivity. Contrary to hypotheses, we found that negative urgency alone did not alter the relationship between anxiety and experiential avoidance. However, follow-up analyses including data-driven factors of impulsivity revealed that in combination, anxiety and both emotion-based impulsivity (i.e. negative and positive urgency) and hyperactivity were linked to greater experiential avoidance. By contrast, anxiety and non-planning were associated with lower experiential avoidance. These results provide targets for future studies to examine individual differences in profiles of co-occurring anxiety and impulsivity.