Effects of intolerance of uncertainty on subjective and psychophysiological measures during fear acquisition and delayed extinction

Abstract

Individuals who score high in self-reported Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) tend to find uncertainty unacceptable and aversive. In recent years, research has shed light on the role of IU in modulating subjective (i.e. expectancy ratings) and psychophysiological responses (i.e. skin conductance) across different classical fear conditioning procedures, particularly that of immediate extinction. However, there remain gaps in understanding how IU, in comparison to other negative emotionality traits (STAI-T), impact different types of subjective and psychophysiological measures during different classical fear conditioning procedures. Here, we analyzed IU, STAI-T, subjective (i.e. fear ratings) and psychophysiological (i.e. skin conductance, auditory startle blink) data recorded during fear acquisition training and 24h-delayed extinction training (n = 66). Higher IU, over STAI-T, was: (1) significantly associated with greater fear ratings to the learned fear cue during fear acquisition training, and (2) at trend associated with greater fear ratings to the learned fear versus safe cue during delayed extinction training. Both IU and STAI-T were not related to skin conductance or auditory startle blink during fear acquisition training and delayed extinction training. These results add to and extend our current understanding of the role of IU on subjective and physiological measures during different fear conditioning procedures, particularly that of delayed extinction training. Implications of these findings and future directions are discussed.

Neural and psychophysiological markers of intolerance of uncertainty

“…visual stimulus) and an aversive outcome (e.g. electric shock)), regardless of whether the phase was uninstructed or instructed, no significant relationships were observed between intolerance of uncertainty and psychophysiological (Klingelhöfer-Jens et al, 2022;Mertens et al, 2022) or neural measures (Wendt & Morriss, 2022;Wroblewski et al, 2022). However, during uninstructed acquisition, Lipp et al, (2022) observed in a large sample (n = 217) that higher intolerance of uncertainty was associated with greater skin conductance response to omitted unconditioned stimuli (i.e., electric shock).…”

“…However, during uninstructed acquisition, Lipp et al, (2022) observed in a large sample (n = 217) that higher intolerance of uncertainty was associated with greater skin conductance response to omitted unconditioned stimuli (i.e., electric shock). In addition, during uninstructed acquisition, two of the articles found that higher intolerance of uncertainty was related to greater self-reported ratings of anxiety, fear, and distress to the threat vs. safe cue (Klingelhöfer-Jens et al, 2022;Mertens et al, 2022).…”

“…Running Head: Editorial for SI Notably, for the associative threat and safety experiments, most of the significant effects of intolerance of uncertainty remained while controlling for other negative affectivity measures (e.g. trait anxiety) (Lipp et al, 2022;Klingelhöfer-Jens et al, 2022;Mertens et al, 2022). Although, it is worth noting that in the Wroblewski et al ( 2022) study, individuals with high intolerance of uncertainty and high trait anxiety were grouped together.…”