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Risk perception by patients with anxiety disorders
The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
|August 1, 1994
Summary
Patients with anxiety disorders do not have altered risk perception compared to healthy individuals. Both groups showed similar patterns of overestimating rare risks and underestimating common ones, suggesting normal cognitive risk assessment.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive psychology
- Clinical psychology
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Social psychology studies reveal systematic risk perception distortions in healthy individuals.
- Anxiety disorders may stem from overly objective risk assessments, a hypothesis requiring investigation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare risk perception in patients with anxiety disorders versus matched controls.
- To test if anxiety disorders correlate with excessively objective risk assessments.
Main Methods:
- Fifty patients with anxiety disorders and 50 matched controls participated.
- Participants estimated the likelihood of 22 specific events occurring to themselves or the average person.
Main Results:
- No significant differences were found between anxiety patients and controls in risk estimation or accuracy.
- Both groups exhibited similar risk distortion patterns: overestimating rare risks and underestimating common risks.
- Both groups consistently underestimated personal relative risks compared to the average person.
Conclusions:
- Cognitive risk estimates for specific events appear normal in patients with anxiety disorders.
- The findings do not support the hypothesis that anxiety disorders arise from overly objective risk assessment.
- Risk perception in anxiety disorders may be comparable to that of the general population.