Worry as a Predictor of Fear Acquisition in a Nonclinical Sample

Joos, Els; Vansteenwegen, Debora; Hermans, Dirk

doi:10.1177/0145445512446477

Cited by 24 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Worry (i.e. cognitive interpretations and anticipation of potential future threatening encounters, Castaneda and Segerstrom 2004), does on one hand seem to play an important role in fear acquisition (Joos et al 2012; see also McLaughlin et al 2007) and on the other hand worry might contribute to the maintenance of fear (Castaneda and Segerstrom 2004). Th erefore we formulated our questionnaire items in a way to capture aff ective responses labelled both fear and worry.…”

Section: Instrumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public attitude towards the implementation of management actions aimed at reducing human fear of brown bears and wolves

Frank

Johansson

Flykt³

2015

Wildlife Biology

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Previous research on human fear of large carnivores has mainly been based on self-reports in which individual survey items and the objects of fear are measured, so whether a person fears attacks on humans or livestock and pets has not been identifi ed. Th e objectives of this study were to diff erentiate between the objects of fear as well as capturing attitudes towards implementation of management actions and the potential for confl ict index (PCI). Th ese concern the implementation of a limited number of management actions currently used or discussed in Sweden that are aimed at reducing human fear of brown bears/wolves. 391 persons living in areas with either brown bear (n ϭ 198) or wolf (n ϭ 193) in Sweden responded to a questionnaire. Th e degree of self-reported fear varied between residents in brown bear areas and residents in wolf areas. Th e fear of attacks on livestock and pets was stronger than fear of attacks on humans in both brown bear and wolf areas. In brown bear areas, fear was strongest for livestock, while in wolf areas fear was strongest for pets. Th e fear of attacks on livestock and pets was signifi cantly stronger in wolf areas, while the fear of attacks on humans was strongest in brown bear areas. In both brown bear and wolf areas, there was little acceptance of implementation of management actions that would allow people to carry pepper spray or a gun outdoors. Management actions aimed at setting a population cap for bear/ wolf populations, information on how to act when encountering a bear/wolf, and providing information on local presence of bear/wolf had relatively high acceptability. Th is was especially true for respondents expressing high fear of attacks on humans.

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Section: Instrumentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Public attitude towards the implementation of management actions aimed at reducing human fear of brown bears and wolves

Frank

Johansson

Flykt³

2015

Wildlife Biology

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“…For example, high-trait anxiety has been associated with enhanced fear acquisition in some studies (Indovina, Robbins, Núñez-Elizalde, Dunn, & Bishop, 2011), but not in others (Torrents-Rodas et al, 2013). The same is true for trait-worry (Joos, Vansteenwegen, & Hermans, 2012;Otto et al, 2007). These studies used relatively different conditioning tasks and a possible explanation for the inconsistent results is that ambiguous tasks may obscure the effects of trait anxiety (Torrents-Rodas et al, 2012;see Beckers, Krypotos, Boddez, Effting, & Kindt, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conditioned Fear Acquisition and Generalization in Generalized Anxiety Disorder

et al. 2015

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Abnormal fear conditioning processes (including fear acquisition and conditioned fear-generalization) have been implicated in the pathogenesis of anxiety disorders. Previous research has shown that individuals with panic disorder present enhanced conditioned fear-generalization in comparison to healthy controls. Enhanced conditioned fear-generalization could also characterize generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), but research so far is inconclusive. An important confounding factor in previous research is comorbidity. The present study examined conditioned fear-acquisition and fear-generalization in 28 patients with GAD and 30 healthy controls using a recently developed fear acquisition and generalization paradigm assessing fear-potentiated startle and online expectancies of the unconditioned stimulus. Analyses focused on GAD patients without comorbidity but included also patients with comorbid anxiety disorders. Patients and controls did not differ as regards fear acquisition. However, contrary to our hypothesis, both groups did not differ either in most indexes of conditioned fear-generalization.Moreover, dimensional measures of GAD symptoms were not correlated with conditioned fear-generalization indexes. Similar results were obtained for patients with comorbidity.These results suggest that conditioned fear-generalization is not enhanced in GAD. Results are discussed with special attention to the possible effects of comorbidity on fear learning abnormalities.

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“…Thus, an important step to truly grasping the etiology of anxiety disorders is identifying individual difference variables that influence fear conditionability in a laboratory setting (i.e., Eysenck, 1976; Zinbarg and Mohlman, 1998; Lissek et al, 2005; Mineka and Zinbarg, 2006). Despite considerable efforts to do so, research has yielded mixed empirical results (Joos et al, 2012). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The lack of ambiguity in this procedure obstructs the examination of interindividual variability in fear learning: mostly everyone will exhibit fear upon confrontation with the CS+ and inhibit fear upon confrontation with the CS− (Lissek et al, 2006; Beckers et al, 2013). A number of studies have actually failed to find an effect of trait anxiety (a known vulnerability factor for anxiety disorders; Spielberger and Gorsuch, 1983) on differential fear conditioning (e.g., Joos et al, 2012; Torrents-Rodas et al, 2013; but see Baas et al, 2008; Indovina et al, 2011; Gazendam et al, 2013). When comparing clinical with non-clinical populations, reduced discriminatory fear learning has been sometimes successfully observed among participants with anxiety disorders (for a review, see Lissek et al, 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…DASS-S has recently been linked to worry (Szabó, 2011). Interestingly, worry has recently also emerged as a predictor for heightened conditionability (Otto et al, 2007; Gazendam and Kindt, 2012; Joos et al, 2012), making it crucial to discriminate the role of anxiety and tension-stress during fear conditioning. Other personality traits related to trait anxiety such as neuroticism and extraversion have also been implicated as potential sources for individual variability in fear learning (Eysenck, 1976) and this proposal has received partial support from a few studies (e.g., Frederikson and Georgiades, 1992; Pineles et al, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Individual Differences in Discriminatory Fear Learning under Conditions of Ambiguity: A Vulnerability Factor for Anxiety Disorders?

Arnaudova¹,

Krypotos²,

Effting³

et al. 2013

Front. Psychol.

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Complex fear learning procedures might be better suited than the common differential fear-conditioning paradigm for detecting individual differences related to vulnerability for anxiety disorders.Two such procedures are the blocking procedure and the protection-fromovershadowing procedure. Their comparison allows for the examination of discriminatory fear learning under conditions of ambiguity. The present study examined the role of individual differences in such discriminatory fear learning. We hypothesized that heightened trait anxiety would be related to a deficit in discriminatory fear learning. Participants gave US-expectancy ratings as an index for the threat value of individual CSs following blocking and protection-from-overshadowing training. The difference in threat value at test between the protected-from-overshadowing conditioned stimulus (CS) and the blocked CS was negatively correlated with scores on a self-report tension-stress scale that approximates facets of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale-Stress (DASS-S), but not with other individual difference variables. In addition, a behavioral test showed that only participants scoring high on the DASS-S avoided the protected-fromovershadowing CS.This observed deficit in discriminatory fear learning for participants with high levels of tension-stress might be an underlying mechanism for fear overgeneralization in diffuse anxiety disorders such as GAD.

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Worry as a Predictor of Fear Acquisition in a Nonclinical Sample

Cited by 24 publications

References 53 publications

Public attitude towards the implementation of management actions aimed at reducing human fear of brown bears and wolves

Public attitude towards the implementation of management actions aimed at reducing human fear of brown bears and wolves

Conditioned Fear Acquisition and Generalization in Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Individual Differences in Discriminatory Fear Learning under Conditions of Ambiguity: A Vulnerability Factor for Anxiety Disorders?

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