The Looming Cognitive Style and Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Distinctive Danger Schemas and Cognitive Phenomenology

Abstract

While great strides have been made in understanding the nature, role, and maintenance of maladaptive cognitive and affective avoidance strategies in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), much remains to be learned about the nature of threat appraisals that are instigators of such compensatory self-protective responses. The looming cognitive style (LCS) is characterized by a distinctive cognitive phenomenology and tendency to construct mental scenarios and appraisals of unfolding threat and increasing danger. Research shows that the LCS functions as a danger schema and is related to worry and anxiety but not depression. Two studies were conducted to examine the role of the LCS in GAD. Results of these studies suggest that the LCS is present at higher levels in GADs but not in non-GADS or unipolar depressives. Study 1 used an analogue sample of students with a probable diagnosis of GAD. Study 2 investigated the distinctiveness and specificity of the LCS in clinically diagnosed patients and nonpsychopathology controls. Results of Study 2 indicate that the LCS is present in clinical GADs but not unipolar depressive disorders or nonpsychopathology controls. Collectively, results of both studies suggest that the LCS uniquely contributes to the discrimination and classification of GAD beyond the effects of anxious and depressive symptoms, worry, and thought suppression. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for extending current cognitive conceptualizations of GAD.