Shorter communicationExperiential avoidance and aversive visual images: Response delays and event-related potentials on a simple matching task
Introduction
According to Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson (1999) an individual pre-disposed towards experiential avoidance (high-EA) may attempt to suppress any unwanted thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, or actively avoid any situations that may elicit these unwanted private events. Recent studies have sought to determine if individuals predisposed towards high-EA, as measured by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ; Hayes et al., 2004), experience greater levels of anxiety and affective distress, relative to low-EA individuals, when exposed to experimentally induced stressors.
These studies have employed physically aversive stimuli (e.g., inhalations of CO2: Feldner, Zvolensky, Eifert, & Spira, 2003, and cold-presser tasks: Feldner et al., 2006) and thus it could be argued that the results may not generalise to non-physical stressors, such as emotionally challenging visual material. One recent study, however, has addressed this issue (Sloan, 2004). The participants were shown a series of six brief film clips that were intended to elicit pleasant, unpleasant or neutral emotional states. Consistent with the findings of Feldner et al. (2003) the high-EA group reported greater negative affect following two of the three unpleasant film clips (fear, disgust) compared to the low-EA group. In contrast to these self-reports, the high-EA group responded to the fear and disgust film clips with decreased heart rates relative to the low-EA group; neutral film clips produced the opposite effect (i.e., elevated rates in the former group). Sloan suggested that these response patterns might reflect ongoing attempts by the high-EA individuals to regulate their internal experiences leading to greater levels of arousal during resting or neutral periods.
Experiment 1 of the current study sought to extend the Sloan (2004) research by using a computerised procedure that required overt behavioural responding by participants, which provided them with control over the presentation of the visual material (i.e., aversive or neutral pictures). Two measures of trial-by-trial avoidance were recorded; type of image selected and reaction times. Avoiding an aversive stimulus by deliberately selecting the neutral image was associated with negative feedback (i.e. participants were told they had made the ‘wrong’ choice). Recent findings suggest that avoidant individuals may be more sensitive to potential negative social consequences within an experiment (McAuliffe, 2004), and it was predicted that this may function to override avoidance of the aversive images. In contrast, the time taken to select an aversive versus a neutral image did not lead to any negative feedback, and thus it was predicted that reaction time would prove to be the more robust measure of avoidance in the current study. In short, there should be no difference between high- and low-EA groups on the image-selected measure, but the former group should show longer average reaction times when selecting an aversive image. Experiment 2 sought to replicate and extend Experiment 1 and incorporated electroencephalograms (EEG) as a measure of emotional processing.
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were selected on the basis of their scores on the 8-item AAQ (note, this version of the AAQ scores in the opposite direction to the original AAQ). Using the same criteria as Feldner et al. (2003), 29 high-EA participants were identified from a pool of undergraduates (); 15 agreed to participate (9 female; M age=22.6; M AAQ=32.28 SD=2.614). Fourteen individuals were recruited for the low-EA group (11 female; M age=23.29 years, M AAQ=47.86 SD 2.57).
Questionnaires
Experiential avoidance: The
Experiment 2
The second experiment replicated the matching task supplemented by the use of event-related potentials (ERPs) as a psycho-physiological measure that correlates with the processing of emotionally arousing stimuli. A recent study demonstrated that both pleasant and unpleasant pictures, taken from the IAPS, prompted a marked positive-going slow waveform, in contrast to the distinctly more negative slow-wave response to neutral pictures (Cuthbert, Schupp, Bradley, Birbaumer, & Lang, 2000).
At the
General discussion
Consistent with experimental predictions, the reaction time measure but not image-selected discriminated between high- and low/mid-EA groups. Specifically, the high-EA groups took significantly longer to emit a correct response that produced an aversive relative to a neutral image. Conversely, the reaction times of the low- and mid-EA groups did not differ significantly between aversive and neutral stimuli. Insofar as a response delay (that produces an aversive stimulus) may be interpreted as a
Acknowledgements
The preparation of this article was supported by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and the Social Sciences, through a Government of Ireland Scholarship. Our thanks go to Steve Hayes and Denise Sloan for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.
References (18)
- et al.
Brain potentials in affective picture processing: Covariation with autonomic arousal and affective report
Biological Psychology
(2000) - et al.
The effects of acceptance versus control contexts on avoidance of panic-related symptoms
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry
(2003) - et al.
The role of experiential avoidance in acute pain tolerance: A laboratory test
Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry
(2006) - et al.
Emotional avoidance: An experimental test of individual differences and response suppression using biological challenge
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(2003) - et al.
Avoidance and depression: The construction of the Cognitive-Behavioral Avoidance Scale
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(2004) - et al.
The valence-specific laterality effect in free viewing conditions: The influence of sex, handedness and response bias
Brain and Cognition
(2003) - et al.
Determinants of dominance: Is language laterality explained by physical or linguistic features of speech?
NeuroImage
(2005) Emotion regulation in action: Emotional reactivity in experiential avoidance
Behaviour Research and Therapy
(2004)- et al.
Worry: A cognitive phenomenon intimately linked to affective, physiological and interpersonal behavioural processes
Cognitive Therapy and Research
(1998)
Cited by (19)
Next-day effects of dysfunctional and functional emotion regulation and the moderating role of experiential avoidance
2019, Journal of Contextual Behavioral ScienceCitation Excerpt :Thus, individuals who are higher in trait EA may be more likely to engage in internal- or external-dysfunctional ER strategies, and immediately benefit from their use, but may also be more vulnerable to the potential next-day negative emotion increases that follow. Consistently, one study showed that, compared with individuals with lower trait EA, individuals with higher trait EA reported less distress during an emotion induction, but greater distress immediately after the emotion induction (Cochrane, Barnes-Holmes, Barnes-Holmes, Stewart, & Luciano, 2007). Thus, EA may lead to engagement in avoidant behaviors (i.e., dysfunctional ER strategies) that immediately reduce negative emotions, but also lead to escalations in next-day emotion.
From Relational Frame Theory to implicit attitudes and back again: Clarifying the link between RFT and IRAP research
2015, Current Opinion in PsychologyCitation Excerpt :The following section will elaborate the importance of this scope, which may not be apparent at first glance. Existing research has already demonstrated that RFT allows us to conceptualize many forms of psychological suffering as a natural — if undesirable — product of our ‘ability to language’ (e.g. anxiety and phobia [6], derived transfer of mood functions [30]), rather than the necessary and/or sole product of a fundamental mental or biological pathology (although, it is important to note that this does not in any way exclude biological variables from our analysis [31,32]). Furthermore, RFT research has made many advances in modeling and unpacking the role of human language in psychological suffering within the laboratory (e.g. separating derived fear and avoidance [33••]; eliminating avoidance with therapeutic analogs [34••]; demonstrating derived thought suppression [35]; reactivity within depression [16]; disgust within OCD [25]; and ideal versus actual self-esteem within depression [19]).
Examining the Effectiveness of Fear Appeals in Prompting Help-Seeking: The Case of At-Risk Gamblers
2017, Psychology and Marketing