Two Factors Underlying Maladaptive Inference of Causal Structure Can Drive Resistance to Extinction in Anxiety

Abstract

Anxiety disorders often involve the maintenance of exaggerated beliefs about threat, even in the face of contrary evidence. Individual variability in therapy outcomes has been proposed to arise from differences in the causal structure of events that people infer through experience, with spontaneous recovery of fear more likely if subjects ascribe safe and threatening outcomes to different underlying causes. What aspects of the inference process might make agents susceptible to forming such maladaptive beliefs?