The relation between worrying and concerns: The importance of perceived probability and cost
Section snippets
Participants and procedure
Participants were 197 undergraduate students (52.3% female) at a large Midwestern university. They ranged in age from 17 to 23 years (; ). Most (82.1%) were European-American, with 6.7% Latina/o, 6.2% African-American, 3.6% Asian-American, and the remaining 1.4% reporting that they belong to other ethnic groups (e.g., biracial). Participants, who completed paper and pencil instruments during a single experimental session, received course credit in Introductory Psychology for
Results
Information concerning the prevalence of concerns in different domains is presented in Table 1. The most common concerns in this sample were in the achievement domain, though interpersonal and health concerns were also rather common. As can be seen in Table 2, consistent with the results of past research, the frequency of concerns in different domains tended to not be associated with the psychopathology dimension scores. Anhedonic depression was not significantly associated with any of the
Discussion
We found that individual differences in the life domains about which individuals are concerned was not strongly associated with worry severity. This is not surprising given that the results of past research have not revealed consistent differences between individuals with GAD and controls in the life domains about which they worry. In the present study, only the number of interpersonal concerns was significantly associated with worry severity. Although this finding is consistent with theorizing
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2022, Behaviour Research and TherapyCitation Excerpt :In contrast, in the OCD sample, only elevated severity ratings were associated with elevated symptoms (Woods et al., 2002). Berenbaum et al. (2007) demonstrated in a non-clinical sample that individuals with elevated levels of worry also gave higher probability estimates and higher perceived cost (i.e., severity) of the possible negative outcomes of the events they worried about. Similarly, individuals with OCD seem to lack the “unrealistic optimism bias”, which non-clinical individuals have with respect to the perceived (low) probability of negative events occurring (Moritz & Jelinek, 2009).
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2022, Journal of Mathematical PsychologyThreat appraisal and negative affect under ambiguity in generalised anxiety disorder
2020, Journal of Anxiety DisordersCitation Excerpt :In such studies, participants are asked to rate the probability of self-referential worries (Berenbaum, Thompson, & Pomerantz, 2007) or hypothetical negative scenarios (e.g., "Your health deteriorating’’; Berenbaum, Thompson, & Bredemeier, 2007). Support for biased probability judgement in GAD has been provided by studies that observed an association of worry severity with overestimation of undesirable outcomes occurring (Berenbaum, Thompson, Bredemeier et al., 2007; Berenbaum, Thompson, Pomerantz et al., 2007; MacLeod, Williams, & Bekerian, 1991). Indeed, overestimation of threat is one of the key cognitive processing errors that has been identified across anxiety disorders, such as social anxiety disorder (Foa, Franklin, Perry, & Herbert, 1996; Lucock & Salkovskis, 1988), panic disorder (Clark, 1986), agoraphobia (McNally & Foa, 1987), obsessive-compulsive disorder (Clark, 2004, p. 112), and posttraumatic stress disorder (Ehlers & Clark, 2000).
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2012, Journal of Anxiety DisordersCitation Excerpt :Another possibility is that distal outcomes only become sufficiently salient to garner attention when they are perceived as both very likely and very costly, given that there are lots of low cost outcomes that are fairly likely to occur in the long run (and one cannot attend to them all). Either of these accounts could explain why asking individuals to rate the probabilities and costs of self-generated outcomes (Berenbaum, Thompson, & Pomerantz, 2007) would be more likely to yield a probability × cost interaction, relative to having them rate probabilities and costs for a specified list of outcomes with no explicit reference to timeframe (Berenbaum, Thompson, & Bredemeier, 2007). Future research should explore these ideas, along with other possible accounts for why the interactive effect of probability and cost estimates on worry is more prominent for distal outcomes.