Cognitive vulnerability to anxiety in the stress generation process: Interaction between the Looming Cognitive Style and Anxiety Sensitivity

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Abstract

This study sought to extend the investigation of cognitive-personality vulnerability in the stress generation process to the field of anxiety. We examined two well documented cognitive vulnerabilities to anxiety: the Looming Cognitive Style (LCS) and Anxiety Sensitivity (ASI). Investigating 72 undergraduates who were assessed twice over a 4-month interval, we found support for the hypothesis that the two cognitive vulnerabilities to anxiety augment each other's stress generating effect. Results indicated that combination of LCS and ASI together had a far stronger stress generation effect that would just one factor alone. Each factor was positively associated with Time 2 stressful events under high levels of the other, but not under low levels. Thus findings revealed that the joint combination of the two cognitive vulnerabilities seemed to play a particularly marked role over a 4-month time interval. These findings are important because they are among the first to show stress generation effects for anxiety-related cognitive styles.

Introduction

The past two decades have seen a surge of interest in the transactional and reciprocal relationships between stressful life events and emotional disorders.

An extensive literature has accumulated that suggests that people do not simply differ in the degree to which they suffer from misfortunes, but also in the extent that they themselves actively propagate, or generate, unfortunate circumstances and environments (Shahar, 2006). Hammen's stress generation model is arguably the best illustration of this active effect of individuals on their environment (Hammen, 1991, Hammen, 2006). Thus, Hammen and colleagues found that depressed individuals (Hammen, 1991) or their offspring (Adrian & Hammen, 1993) partly contributed to creating a higher rate of stressful life events over time.

Recently, research attention has been shifted from symptoms and syndromes implicated in generation to cognitive-personality factors that propel individuals to generate stressful life events, thereby maintaining symptoms and problems. Much of this research has dealt with stress generation processes in depression (Hankin et al., 2005, Joiner et al., 2005, Safford et al., 2007). Taken together, evidence depicts cognitive-personality vulnerability to depression as an active, rather than passive process. Namely, vulnerability may not only make individuals more likely to develop psychological problems, but also be implicated in influencing individuals to self-generate such stressful events that trigger or propagate their problems.

Building on this line of inquiry, we sought to extend the investigation of cognitive-personality vulnerability in the stress generation process to the field of anxiety. The role of anxiety-oriented cognitive vulnerabilities in stress generation process has not been examined. Herein, we focus on the separate and combined effects of two relatively distinct (empirically and conceptually), but moderately correlated cognitive vulnerability factors in anxiety, namely, the Looming Cognitive Style (LCS) and Anxiety Sensitivity (ASI).

According to the looming vulnerability model, a key feature of anxiety and fear is that it is marked by distortions in the perceptual, dynamic, and temporal aspects of perceptions of threat. Some individuals develop a relative stable and generalized anxiety-prone cognitive vulnerability to generate dynamic perceptions of threats and mental scenarios (images of threats) as rapidly rising in risk or moving towards aversive ends for the self (Riskind et al., 2000, Riskind and Williams, 2005a). College students with this “Looming Cognitive Style (or the LCS) are more anxious, but not necessarily more depressed, and exhibit a schematic interpretative bias (e.g., on homophones) and memory bias (e.g. pictoral images) for threat information. Moreover, the LCS is a common theme across a spectrum of anxiety syndromes including social anxiety, OCD, generalized anxiety, and PTSD (Reardon and Williams, 2007, Riskind et al., 2007, Williams et al., 2005), and anxiety disorder patients (Riskind and Rector, in preparation, Riskind and Williams, 2005b). The LCS shows remarkable stability over time and predicts future anxiety symptom changes over short periods of as well as a week and longer periods of up to 7 months.

Anxiety Sensitivity is a well-established cognitive style that refers to the perception that anxiety symptoms may produce adverse or harmful consequences (Reiss and McNally, 1985, Taylor, 1999). Past research has indicated that LCS and ASI are distinct albeit moderately correlated vulnerabilities to anxiety (Reardon & Williams, 2007, r = .32, p < .001).

In regard to the stress generation process, LCS (Williams, 2002) and ASI (Andersson & Hägnebo, 2003) are both linked to avoidance coping (e.g., wanting unpleasant situations to “go away”) which has been shown to be a predictor of stress generation (Holahan, Moos, Holahan, Brennan, & Schutte, 2005). Each cognitive style has been linked to faulty coping that is linked to stress generation. They might have an additive effect on stress generation. As will be explicated below, the two styles may also have a synergistic effect.

Our chief hypothesis in this study was that each of the aforesaid cognitive styles would augment and magnify any impact of the other negative style in producing a stress generation effect. Both negative cognitive styles may deplete self-regulatory resources that are necessary for successful coping. Baumeister and his coworkers (Muraven et al., 1998, Schmeichel and Baumeister, 2004, Vohs et al., 2005) have provided evidence that self-regulatory depletion can impair both impression management (e.g., talking too much or too little to others) and the ability to exercise self-control which are necessary to avoid failure and produce success. In addition, any negative effects of LCS and ASI on avoidance behavior or resource depletion are likely to multiplicative effects when combined. ASI amplifies the effect of anxiety which would be much more commonly experienced with LCS. By the same token, LCS increases the likelihood of anxiety across a wider variety of more mundane situations, and ASI would amplify its dysfunctional impact. Together, they would have a potentially potent negative synergy.

Based on these considerations, we predicted that both LCS and ASI would be associated with stress generation over time. Moreover, we predicted that the combination of both factors together would have a far stronger stress generation effect that would just one factor alone.

Section snippets

Participants and procedure

Participants were 72 college students (approximately 78% female) from George Mason University who participated for course credit. Their ages ranged from 18 to 43 (M = 20.7, SD = 6.31). Participants were from an ethnically diverse subject pool. Approximately 60% described themselves as Caucasians, 16% as Asians, 5% as African Americans, 6.7% as Hispanics, and the remainder as other ethnicities. The participants completed the following packet of questionnaires on an internet data collection site.

Instruments

Looming Maladaptive Style Questionnaire (LMSQ; Riskind et al., 2000) is a validated measure of individuals’ tendency (or Looming Cognitive Style) to generate mental representations or expectations of potentially threatening situations that are rapidly escalating in risk and danger as they unfold or are advancing toward some dreaded outcome (i.e., the Looming Cognitive Style—LCS). Participants read six brief vignettes describing potentially stressful situations (e.g., hearing odd sounds from

Results

Means, standard deviations, and intercorrelations between study variables are presented in Table 1. Replicating previous studies, both ASI and LMS correlated with BAI anxiety (r = .49 and .31, p < .001); respectively. ASI correlated with BDI depression (r = .46, p < .001), and LMS evinced a trend in this direction (r = .22, p = .054). Stress evinced a very high stability over time (r = .74, p < .001), and correlated with depression and anxiety in predictable ways at both Times 1 and 2.

In Table 2 we present

Discussion

Investigating 72 undergraduates who were assessed twice over a 4-month interval, we showed, to the best of our knowledge for the first time, that two cognitive vulnerabilities to anxiety – the Looming Cognitive Style and Anxiety Sensitivity – augmented each other in predicting an increase in stressful life events over time. These results fit the broad picture emerging from current research that negative cognitive styles have stress generation effects (Shahar, 2006) that occur independently and

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