The relation between worrying and concerns: The importance of perceived probability and cost

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Abstract

The relation between worrying and individuals’ concerns was examined in a sample of 197 college students. Participants described the five undesirable outcomes that they thought about most often, indicated how likely they thought the outcomes were, and how upset they would be by them. Worry severity was measured using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire. The relation between worry severity and the life domains about which individuals were concerned was quite weak. In contrast, as predicted, greater worry was associated with higher probability and cost estimates. In addition, cost estimates moderated the relation between worry severity and probability estimates. The potential importance of perceived threat for understanding worrying is discussed.

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 (M=18.7; SD=0.9). 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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