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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 2, 2025

Reducing State Anxiety Using Working Memory Maintenance
08:17

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Individual differences in affective flexibility predict future anxiety and worry.

Eve Twivy1, Maud Grol1, Elaine Fox1

  • 1Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Cognition & Emotion
|November 6, 2020
PubMed
Summary

Cognitive flexibility, specifically affective flexibility, impacts anxiety. Difficulty shifting attention to positive emotional stimuli and away from negative ones predicts increased anxiety and worry over time.

Keywords:
Cognitive flexibilityaffective flexibilityanxietyworry

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Area of Science:

  • Psychology
  • Cognitive Neuroscience

Background:

  • Cognitive flexibility is linked to anxiety and worry.
  • Few studies explore cognitive flexibility with emotional stimuli (affective flexibility).

Purpose of the Study:

  • Investigate if individual differences in affective flexibility predict trait anxiety and worry over seven weeks.
  • Examine the relationship between affective flexibility and emotional stimuli processing.

Main Methods:

  • Used a task-switching paradigm to measure affective flexibility in 79 participants.
  • Assessed trait anxiety and worry levels over a seven-week period.

Main Results:

  • Less efficient attention shifting towards positive stimuli predicted higher anxiety.
  • More efficient attention shifting away from negative stimuli predicted higher anxiety and worry.
  • Findings suggest avoidance of negative information correlates with increased anxiety.

Conclusions:

  • Anxiety may not stem from general cognitive flexibility deficits.
  • Affective flexibility components are crucial for understanding nuanced relationships with anxiety.
  • Results highlight the importance of detailed cognitive flexibility assessments.