Abstract
Subjects who were either high or low in trait anxiety received mood-induction procedures designed to produce either an anxious or a nonanxious mood. The amount of worrying that these subjects engaged in when cued with one of their current worries was greater among those high in trait anxiety than among those low in trait anxiety. In addition, anxious mood induction produced more worrying initially than did nonanxious mood induction. In general terms, the findings indicated that anxious induced mood can facilitate the initiation of the worry process, but its subsequent maintenance is far more a function of trait anxiety. It was concluded that prolonged worry occurs mainly in those individuals who have highly organized clusters of worry-related information stored in long-term memory.
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Eysenck, M.W. Anxiety and the worry process. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 22, 545–548 (1984). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333903
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03333903