Self-efficacy moderates the relationship between avoidance intentions and anxiety

Future-directed intentions elicit emotional changes that may affect behavioral performance. We have previously shown that avoidance intentions can elicit a reduction in anxiety (Ng & Lovibond, 2017). In the present experiment, we manipulated within-participant self-efficacy for an avoidance behavior to determine whether self-efficacy moderates the relationship between avoidance intentions and anxiety. Anxiety was indexed through skin conductance response and self-report. Participants learned that certain stimuli signaled an aversive electric shock, which they could avoid by performing an easy task or a hard task. Participants had relatively high self-efficacy for the easy task and low self-efficacy for the hard task. Results indicated that on trials when participants intended to avoid the shock, they experienced significantly greater reductions in anxiety when they had to perform the easy task compared with the hard task. We conclude that self-efficacy for avoidance behavior moderates the relationship between avoidance intentions and anxiety. In situations in which avoiding a harmful outcome is an adaptive response, it may be important to increase self-efficacy for avoidance behaviors from the intention-formation stage itself. If that occurs, the reinforcing reductions in anxiety may reaffirm the intention and increase its temporal stability, thereby increasing the likelihood of behavioral performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).