Anger potentiates the reporting of threatening interpretations: an experimental study
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Updated: Jun 27, 2026

Using the Threat Probability Task to Assess Anxiety and Fear During Uncertain and Certain Threat
Published on: September 12, 2014
Natalie Barazzone1, Graham C L Davey
1The University of Sussex, UK.
Abstract:
This paper reports the results of an experiment investigating the effect of induced anger on interpretational bias using the homophone spelling task. Four groups of participants experienced anger, anxiety, happy or neutral mood inductions and then completed the homophone spelling task. Participants who experienced anger and anxiety inductions reported significantly more threat/neutral homophones as threats compared to control participants; moods had an emotion-congruent effect on threat reporting, with negative moods increasing the tendency to report threat/neutral homophones as threats and positive moods increasing the tendency to report positive/neutral homophones as positive. The findings provide evidence that anger potentiates the reporting of threatening interpretations and does so independently of any effect of concurrent levels of state and trait anxiety. The mechanism mediating this effect is unclear, but the results do lend support to those theories of psychopathology--and especially of PTSD--that see a causal role for anger in the maintenance of symptoms.
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