High Anxious Participants Research Articles

Influence of attention focus and trait anxiety on tolerance of acute pain.

In light of inconsistencies in the reported effects of attention and anxiety on pain tolerance, this study examined the separate and combined effects of attention focus and trait anxiety on tolerance of acute experimental pain. Participants with 'high' and 'low' trait anxiety were assigned to three attention-focus conditions: pain-focused attention, 'undirected' (no experimenter-induced attempts to influence attention focus) and distraction. Several indices of autonomic arousal (systolic and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate and EMG) were measured before and during, and several self-report inventories were completed before and after, each of two administrations of the cold pressor test. In general, pain tolerance was greater when participants were distracted and in low- rather than high-anxiety participants. However, attention and anxiety interacted such that low-anxiety participants were most pain tolerant, and high-anxiety participants were least pain tolerant, in the undirected condition. The results are consistent with the notion that anxiety fosters attentiveness to possible environmental threats, and might have implications for the clinical management of acute pain.

Forearm EMG response activity during motor performance in individuals prone to increased stress reactivity.

Work-related Upper Extremity Disorders (WRUEDs) are conceived of as a multifactorial syndrome caused by the effects of excessive repetitive motions, sustained static postures, and muscular stiffness. Our aim is to test an etiological model derived from a theory by Van Galen and Van Huygevoort [2000] Biol Psychol 51:151-171. The theory holds that physical, emotional, and psychosocial stressors enhance muscular stiffness as a compensatory filtering of impoverished signal-to-noise ratios in the motor system. High individual levels of arousal, as measured by Spielberger et al. [1970], State and Trait Anxiety Test would further enhance a subject's predisposition to react with stiffness responses in conditions of stress. Ten participants with a high- and 10 with a low trait-anxiety score performed a computer task involving series of fast but well-dosed accelerations of the forearm along the surface of a digitizer. To induce cognitive stress a tone had to be remembered simultaneously with the aiming task. Pen-tip displacements and surface electromyographic (EMG) signals were recorded from four forearm muscles. Memory load did not affect error rates but produced shorter reaction times and prolonged movement times. EMG data show that under stress overall levels of neuromotor activation were enhanced. High-anxious participants exhibited higher cocontraction levels than low-anxious participants. The findings support the view that stress and muscular tension are closely related and may provide a clue to the origin of WRUEDs.

Social anxiety and response to touch: incongruence between self-evaluative and physiological reactions

Touch is an important form of social interaction, and one that can have powerful emotional consequences. Appropriate touch can be calming, while inappropriate touch can be anxiety provoking. To examine the impact of social touching, this study compared socially high-anxious ( N=48) and low-anxious ( N=47) women's attitudes concerning social touch, as well as their affective and physiological responses to a wrist touch by a male experimenter. Compared to low-anxious participants, high-anxious participants reported greater anxiety to a variety of social situations involving touch. Consistent with these reports, socially anxious participants reacted to the experimenter's touch with markedly greater increases in self-reported anxiety, self-consciousness, and embarrassment. Physiologically, low-anxious and high-anxious participants showed a distinct pattern of sympathetic-parasympathetic coactivation, as reflected by decreased heart rate and tidal volume, and increased respiratory sinus arrhythmia, skin conductance, systolic/diastolic blood pressure, stroke volume, and respiratory rate. Interestingly, physiological responses were comparable in low and high-anxious groups. These findings indicate that social anxiety is accompanied by heightened aversion towards social situations that involve touch, but this enhanced aversion and negative-emotion report is not reflected in differential physiological responding.

A repressive coping style and affective, facial and physiological responses to looking at emotional pictures

Previous studies have demonstrated increased physiological–emotional responses despite relatively low self-reported affect for individuals with a repressive coping style, as compared to control groups. The main question in the current study was whether such group differences could also be demonstrated by using the picture perception methodology of Lang. A second question was whether differences between these groups could be found in the habituation of physiological and emotional responses. Repressors ( n=14), ‘truly’ low anxious participants ( n=14), and moderately high anxious participants ( n=13) were selected with the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale and the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale. Two sets of 27 pictures with alternating neutral, threatening and sexual content were presented whilst valence and arousal ratings, skin conductance, heart rate and facial muscle responses were measured. No straightforward group differences were found. However, the results suggest that differential habituation, and not a repressive coping style, may contribute to differential self-reported, facial and physiological–emotional responses.

Anxiety and Repression in Attention and Retention

High- and low-anxious college students (as determined by scores on the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale; A. W. Bendig, 1956) and repressors (low anxiety and high scores on the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale; D. P. Crowne & D. Marlowe, 1964) were compared on 3 cognitive tasks. High-anxious participants more often spelled the negative emotional meaning of ambiguous homophones (e.g., pane/pain) and forgot more of their free associations to emotional cue words than did the low-anxious participants. The repressors also detected the emotional meaning of the homophones but unlike the anxious, the repressors did recall their associations to the emotional words. In a working memory task using nonemotional items, the moderately anxious participants recalled fewer words than did the low- and high-anxious participants. The results confirm that both trait anxiety and repression affect information processing at a variety of stages but not in the same way. Repressors were sensitive to, and retentive of, negative emotional stimuli.

Differential encoding of affective and nonaffective content information in trait anxiety

The relative encoding of affective and nonaffective content information in high and low trait anxious individuals was investigated. Experiment 1 (N = 35) found that, compared to Low Anxiety participants, High Anxiety participants showed relatively greater speeding of affective semantic decisions compared to nonaffective content semantic decisions. Using a similarity rating paradigm, Experiments 2 (N = 51) and 3 (N = 100) found higher levels of trait anxiety were associated with a decreased use of content information when nonaffective information was less salient than affective information. Experiment 4 (N = 100) found higher levels of trait anxiety were associated with a complementary increased use of affective information when affective information was less salient than nonaffective information. Thus, it appears that trait anxiety may be associated with a bias to encode less salient information to a greater extent when it is relevant to affect, and to a lesser extent when it is not.

Differential encoding of affective and nonaffective content information in trait anxiety

The relative encoding of affective and nonaffective content information in high and low trait anxious individuals was investigated. Experiment 1 (N = 35) found that, compared to Low Anxiety participants, High Anxiety participants showed relatively greater speeding of affective semantic decisions compared to nonaffective content semantic decisions. Using a similarity rating paradigm, Experiments 2 (N = 51) and 3 (N = 100) found higher levels of trait anxiety were associated with a decreased use of content information when nonaffective information was less salient than affective information. Experiment 4 (N = 100) found higher levels of trait anxiety were associated with a complementary increased use of affective information when affective information was less salient than nonaffective information. Thus, it appears that trait anxiety may be associated with a bias to encode less salient information to a greater extent when it is relevant to affect, and to a lesser extent when it is not.

Anxiety and Mood-congruent Autobiographical Memory: A Conceptual Failure to Replicate

This study further explored whether highly anxious participants exhibit a mood-congruent autobiographical memory bias, as was found in two previous studies (Burke & Mathews, 1992; Richards & Whittaker, 1990). The 74 high and low trait anxious participants retrieved personal memories to anxiety-related, neutral, and positive cue words, and were then asked to recall the original cue words. The study also explored how expression of emotional versus factual responses might affect a memory bias. On most dependent measures, no differences were found between anxiety groups. However, low anxious participants recalled more memories overall than high anxious participants. In addition, the emotions groups recalled more words at free recall than the facts groups. Findings fail to support previous studies that found an autobiographical memory bias to be associated with high anxiety, and cast more support for the mounting evidence against a mood-congruent memory bias in anxiety.

Repressive coping, trait anxiety and reported avoidance of negative thoughts

This study used the Thought Control Questionnaire to investigate whether individuals with different coping styles report using different strategies to suppress negative thoughts. Repressors (high defensiveness-low trait anxiety) who exhibit an avoidant (repressive) coping style, reported using significantly more distraction strategies and significantly fewer punishment strategies than all control groups: low anxious (low defensiveness-low trait anxiety), high anxious (low defensiveness-high trait anxiety) and defensive high anxious (high defensiveness-high trait anxiety). High anxious participants reported using more worry strategies than all other groups. These results are discussed in terms of previous research in this area.

Habituation of cognitive and physiological arousal and social anxiety

This study examined differences in habituation between high and low socially anxious Ss. Participants gave three impromptu speeches, each separated by a brief rest interval. Skin conductance and heart rate were monitored during the speeches. Following each speech participants completed self-ratings of nervousness, heart rate, and palmar sweat activity as well as a modified Social Interaction Self Statement Test. Low anxious controls showed significant reduction of negative expectations and self-reported nervousness, heart rate, and sweat activity across the three trials. Actual heart rate of low-anxious subjects also decreased significantly across trials. In contrast, high anxious subjects did not evidence significant decreases in any of the above measures of anxiety and stress across the three trials. Skin conductance measures increased across trials for both groups, but increased more for the high anxious group than low-anxious controls. Results indicate that high anxiety participants are slow to decrease cognitive and autonomic responsiveness to stressful social situations.

Expectancy bias in trait anxiety.

The ability of anxious and control participants to learn about signals for danger and safety was tested within an autonomic conditioned inhibition (A+/AB-) procedure. Only participants who could verbalize the differential contingencies between the stimuli and shock (aware participants) showed discrimination on electrodermal and shock expectancy measures. In Experiment 1, aware high-anxious participants showed similar responding to control participants. However unaware high-anxious participants showed heightened shock expectancy to all stimuli. Experiment 2 replicated this expectancy bias in anxious unaware participants controlling for shock intensity. In both experiments, expectancy bias was associated primarily with anxiety rather than depression. Results support the notion of an interpretive bias in anxious participants under ambiguous threat, consistent with recent findings from information-processing research on linguistic stimuli.

Individual differences in repressive-defensiveness predict basal salivary cortisol levels.

Prior studies assessing the relation between negative affective traits and cortisol have yielded inconsistent results. Two studies assessed the relation between individual differences in repressive-defensiveness and basal salivary cortisol levels. Experiment 1 assessed midafternoon salivary cortisol levels in men classified as repressors, high-anxious, or low-anxious. In Experiment 2, more rigorous controls were applied as salivary cortisol levels in women and men were assessed at 3 times of day on 3 separate days. In both studies, as hypothesized, repressors and high-anxious participants demonstrated higher basal cortisol levels than low-anxious participants. These findings suggest that both heightened distress and the inhibition of distress may be independently linked to relative elevations in cortisol. Also discussed is the possible mediational role of individual differences in responsivity to, or mobilization for, uncertainty or change.

Expectancy bias in trait anxiety.

The ability of anxious and control participants to learn about signals for danger and safety was tested within an autonomic conditioned inhibition (A+/AB-) procedure. Only participants who could verbalize the differential contingencies between the stimuli and shock (aware participants) showed discrimination on electrodermal and shock expectancy measures. In Experiment 1, aware high-anxious participants showed similar responding to control participants. However unaware high-anxious participants showed heightened shock expectancy to all stimuli. Experiment 2 replicated this expectancy bias in anxious unaware participants controlling for shock intensity. In both experiments, expectancy bias was associated primarily with anxiety rather than depression. Results support the notion of an interpretive bias in anxious participants under ambiguous threat, consistent with recent findings from information-processing research on linguistic stimuli.

The repressor personality and avoidant information processing: A dichotic listening study

The present research was designed to investigate the proposition that repressors, operationally defined by the conjunction of low anxiety and high defensiveness, are particularly adept at avoiding the processing of information when motivated to do so. Four groups of participants (nondefensive-low anxious, high anxious, repressors, and defensive-high anxious) were administered a dichotic listening task involving neutral or negative affective words presented in the unattended ear. Participants shadowed the material presented to the attended ear and simultaneously responded to a probe task presented on a video monitor. Results revealed that repressors made significantly fewer shadowing errors than high anxious and defensive-high anxious participants and marginally significantly fewer shadowing errors than low anxious participants for both neutral and negative words. High anxious participants, however, were later able to recognize the negative words that had been presented to the unattended ear at well above chance levels, whereas the recognition memory of repressors for such negative unattended words was at chance levels. In addition, repressors' responses to a postexperiment questionnaire indicated a significantly greater number of distracting thoughts during the experiment relative to other participants. Repressors, it seems, are indeed skillful at avoidant information processing and this capacity may well be related to the emotional memory deficits they have displayed in previous research.

Sampling Conscious Thought: Influences of Repression—Sensitization and Reporting Conditions

Because of growing evidence that persons classified psychometrically as repressors may be at risk in terms of physical as well as mental health this study explored the ongoing thought processes of repressors, true low anxious, and high anxious individuals. A combination of high and low scores on manifest anxiety and defensiveness scales served to identify the three groups. It was hypothesized that thought samples of individuals in the three groups would reflect a bipolar repression-sensitization continuum. To investigate the possible influence of impression-management, approximately equal members of males and females ( N-32) were assigned to two between-Ss reporting conditions designed to yield expectations of safety (Anonymity) or fear of public evaluation (Disclosure-threat). Content analyses of thought reports by trained judges revealed that thoughts in the Disclosure-threat condition were more emotional, more concerned with others, involved less fantasy, and were reported as being more difficult to control. The three personality categories did not produce significant main effects on thought quality, but did interact with the reporting conditions. Analyses of simple one-way effects for each personality category independently indicated that the high anxious participants had more emotional and difficult to control thoughts in the Disclosure-threat condition, while the repressor and low anxious participants showed no differences. The possible implications of these results in distinguishing competing explanations of the repression-sensitization phenomenon are discussed.