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Dynamically tracking anxious individuals' affective response to valenced information
Karl C Fua1, Bethany A Teachman1
1Department of Psychology, University of Virginia.
Emotion (Washington, D.C.)
|March 31, 2017
Summary
Anxious individuals show negative biases when processing information streams. A new task, Tracking Affect Ratings Over Time (TAROT), reveals that anxiety impacts how people react to positive and negative events.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Affective Science
Background:
- Emotional responses are influenced by current stimuli and past experiences.
- Anxious individuals' reactions to dynamic, valenced information are understudied.
- Existing methods may not capture real-time affective shifts in response to complex stimuli.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce and validate the Tracking Affect Ratings Over Time (TAROT) task.
- To examine affective responses of anxious individuals to evolving information streams.
- To identify cognitive biases in emotional processing related to anxiety.
Main Methods:
- Development and application of the novel TAROT task.
- Participants (N=141 undergraduates) listened to narratives with varying valence and relevance.
- Continuous self-report of emotional state while processing information.
Main Results:
- Preliminary evidence supports the TAROT task's reliability and validity.
- Higher anxiety correlated with negative biases: more negative ratings, quicker shifts to negative events, and negative responses to neutral events.
- Anxious individuals exhibited reduced impact from positive events and prolonged negative impact from negative events.
Conclusions:
- The TAROT task effectively captures cognitive biases in anxious individuals.
- Anxiety alters the processing of positive and negative information, diminishing positive impacts and prolonging negative ones.
- Findings contribute to understanding the mechanisms of biased negative processing in anxiety.
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