Trait anxiety and prior exposure to non-stressful stimuli: effects on psychophysiological arousal and anxiety

Arousal and anxiety responses to stressful stimulation are products of multiple factors that may include the physiological, behavioral, cognitive, affective, trait, and state components of our six-system model, as well as mediational and non-mediational perspectives. Within the context of this model, the present experiment examined the effects of prior exposure to neutral stimuli on arousal and anxiety responses to stress. High and low trait-anxious participants were randomly assigned to one of three prior exposure conditions in which they were exposed to stressful stimuli following exposure to: (a) neutral, non-stressful stimulation in the same modality (the Intramodality Prior Exposure or IPE experimental condition); (b) neutral stimuli in a different modality (the Cross-modality Prior Exposure or CPE control condition); or (c) a rest period (the Stress Only or SO control condition). Results showed that low trait anxious subjects had consistently larger arousal and anxiety responses to stress than did highs and that prior exposure to certain same-modality neutral stimuli reduced responses to subsequent stressors. In addition, arousal was greater in response to cognitive than to affective and in response to non-mediational than mediational conditions. Results are discussed in terms of the inverted-U arousal function and of the six-system model and its implications for understanding anxiety and arousal.