Looming Cognitive Style Contributes to Etiological Processes in Anxiety Disorders

Abstract

The looming vulnerability model (LVM) is concerned with theoretical features of cognitive vulnerability and threat that have been overlooked by other contemporary cognitive vulnerability models. Cognitive vulnerability is not viewed in the LVM as simply due to beliefs and appraisals that overestimate the probability or costs of potential threat stimuli. Other cognitive vulnerability factors such as anxiety sensitivity and intolerance of uncertainty can be viewed in those more static terms. The LVM, in contrast, emphasizes that perceptions of rapid dynamic patterns of change and increases on threat appraisal dimensions also critically contribute to anxiety. For example, if a person believes that there is a high probability of a physical or psychological symptom leading to a negative or catastrophic outcome, the outcomes will evoke less intense anxiety if it is expected to progress slowly or be static than if it is perceived as progressing quickly and suddenly. Notably, a threat is less likely to have an impact on etiological pathways if it is not perceived as dynamically growing. The looming cognitive style (LCS) is introduced to represent these theoretical features of cognitive vulnerability that other vulnerability factors such as anxiety sensitivity and intolerance of uncertainty don’t capture.