scholarly journals Moderators of the Relationships Between State and Trait Anxiety and Depersonalization

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noah J French ◽  
Jeremy William Eberle ◽  
Bethany Teachman

Depersonalization is common in anxiety disorders, but little is known about the factors that influence co-occurring anxiety and depersonalization. We investigated trait moderators of the relationships between state and trait anxiety and depersonalization to better understand their co-occurrence and to identify potential points of intervention. Adults recruited on Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 303) completed two computer tasks designed to increase variability in state anxiety and depersonalization as well as several self-report questionnaires. As hypothesized (preregistration: https://osf.io/xgazd/?view_only=56eba3dfb2b8454a97d3f66eb5217f7a), anxiety positively predicted depersonalization at both a state level, β = 0.43, 95% CI [0.39, 0.47], and a trait level, β = 0.60, 95% CI [0.51, 0.70]. Moreover, as hypothesized, the trait anxiety-trait depersonalization relationship was strengthened by greater anxiety sensitivity, β = 0.25, 95% CI [0.17, 0.34]; distress intolerance, β = 0.15, 95% CI [0.05, 0.25]; and negative interpretation bias for anxiety sensations (inverse transformed), β = -0.21, 95% CI [-0.30, -0.13], and for depersonalization sensations (inverse transformed), β = -0.27, 95% CI [-0.35, -0.19]. None of these hypothesized trait moderators significantly strengthened the state anxiety-state depersonalization relationship. These findings suggest that on a trait level, anxiety and depersonalization more frequently co-occur when people catastrophically misinterpret their symptoms or have lower emotional distress tolerance.

1999 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. 372-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Berthoz ◽  
S. Consoli ◽  
F. Perez-Diaz ◽  
R. Jouvent

SummaryThis study is a careful examination of the relationships between different components of the alexithymia construct and state versus trait anxiety. In order to study the relations between anxiety and alexithymia in a subclinical population, we administered to 125 female college students a test battery including measures of alexithymia (TAS26), state and trait anxiety (STAI) and depression (QD2A). Results indicated positive correlations between depression, anxiety (state and trait) and alexithymia scores. Partial correlations revealed a tight link between trait anxiety and alexithymia. Furthermore, in agreement with the view that alexithymia is a multidimensional construct, the various alexithymia dimensions were found to be diversely correlated with anxiety. On the basis of partial correlation analyses, a descriptive model of the relationships between depression, state anxiety, trait anxiety and alexithymia was postulated. This model was confirmed by pathways analyses.


1988 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 715-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed M. Abdel-Khalek ◽  
Maher Mahmoud Omar

200 male and 277 female undergraduates at the University of Kuwait completed the Templer's Death Anxiety Scale and Spielberger, et al.'s State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for which retest reliabilities were adequate. Women had higher mean scores than men on death and trait anxiety but they were similar in state anxiety. The mean death anxiety score for Kuwaitians was very close to that of Egyptians. There was similarity in death anxiety between Kuwaitian and United States men, but not women. Significant differences appeared on trait anxiety, showing the order from low to high mean scores: United States, Kuwaitian, and Egyptian university students. Correlations among the scales were significant; however, the correlation between state and trait anxiety was higher than that between death anxiety and both state and trait anxiety for men and women. Death anxiety was associated more closely with trait than with state anxiety.


Author(s):  
Ebru Şahan ◽  
Aise Tangılntız

Objectives During the COVID-19 pandemic, excessive workload, a rapidly changing workplace environment, the danger of carrying the virus and transmitting the disease to their families, relatives and those they live with creates stress for the medical workers. In our study, we aimed to evaluate the state and trait anxiety levels of healthcare professionals who encounter patients with suspected COVID-19 infection and related factors. Method Data were collected from healthcare professionals working with patients diagnosed or suspected with COVID-19 via online self-report questionnaire between 9–19 April 2020. The state (STAI-S) and trait anxiety (STAI-T) scale was used to measure anxiety. Results A total of 291 healthcare professionals, 216 women and 75 men, participated in the study. Women's state and trait anxiety were significantly higher than men's. 11 participants without any lifetime psychiatric illness experienced psychiatric symptoms and consulted to a psychiatrist. The state anxiety of those who have children, nurses and those working in branches directly related to the pandemic (Infectious Diseases, Respiratory Diseases, Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine, Radiology, Anesthesiology and Reanimation) was higher than others. The state anxiety of those who thought they were not protected with personal protective equipment and those who did not stay in their own home was higher than others. Conclusions At the forefront of the fight against COVID-19, there are medical personnel who pay a serious psychological cost. Especially in terms of anxiety, we should pay attention to women, workers with children, nurses and people working in branches that are directly related to pandemics.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-115
Author(s):  
Jia-Wei Lim ◽  
Joo-Yee Phang ◽  
Mei-Yan Low ◽  
Chee-Seng Tan

Abstract Procrastination has been found to negatively impact academic and job performance. However, little attention has been given to the effect of procrastination on creative performance. Moreover, past studies have mainly focused on the antecedent role of anxiety in procrastination. The impact of procrastination on anxiety is not clear, though literature has suggested that procrastination may induce anxiety. The primary question addressed in the present study is whether and how procrastination influences creativity. Some exceptional studies have indicated that procrastination allows incubation and hence is conducive to creativity. However, on the basis of the literature, we argued and hypothesized that procrastination may impair creativity through state anxiety. A total of 218 Malaysian undergraduate students were recruited via social networking sites and responded to a packet of online survey questionairres, including self-report of procrastination tendency, state and trait anxiety, and creativity. Results showed that procrastination was positively associated with state and trait anxiety and negatively correlated with creativity. A negative relationship was also observed between state and trait anxiety and creativity. In addition, mediation analysis supported our hypothesis that state anxiety mediates the relationship between procrastination and creativity after controlling for the effect of trait anxiety. Specifically, people tend to experience feeling anxious when they postpone task completion. The high level of anxiety, in turn, is negatively associated with creative performance. As a whole, the findings not only offer the first empirical evidence supportive of the detrimental effect of procrastination on creativity, but also reveal the underlying process. Future directions and limitations are also explored.


1999 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf Stark ◽  
Alfons Hamm ◽  
Anne Schienle ◽  
Bertram Walter ◽  
Dieter Vaitl

Abstract The present study investigated the influence of contextual fear in comparison to relaxation on heart period variability (HPV), and analyzed differences in HPV between low and high anxious, nonclinical subjects. Fifty-three women participated in the study. Each subject underwent four experimental conditions (control, fear, relaxation, and a combined fear-relaxation condition), lasting 10 min each. Fear was provoked by an unpredictable aversive human scream. Relaxation should be induced with the aid of verbal instructions. To control for respiratory effects on HPV, breathing was paced at 0.2 Hz using an indirect light source. Besides physiological measures (HPV measures, ECG, respiration, forearm EMG, blood pressure), emotional states (pleasure, arousal, dominance, state anxiety) were assessed by subjects' self-reports. Since relaxation instructions did not have any effect neither on the subjective nor on the physiological variables, the present paper focuses on the comparison of the control and the fear condition. The scream reliably induced changes in both physiological and self-report measures. During the fear condition, subjects reported more arousal and state anxiety as well as less pleasure and dominance. Heart period decreased, while EMG and diastolic blood pressure showed a tendency to increase. HPV remained largely unaltered with the exception of the LF component, which slightly decreased under fear induction. Replicating previous findings, trait anxiety was negatively associated with HPV, but there were no treatment-specific differences between subjects with low and high trait anxiety.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mildred A. Pointer ◽  
Sadiqa Yancey ◽  
Ranim Abou-Chacra ◽  
Patricia Petrusi ◽  
Sandra J. Waters ◽  
...  

Although several studies have shown that enhanced cardiovascular reactivity can predict hypertension development in African Americans, these findings have not been consistent among all studies examining reactivity and hypertension susceptibility. This inconsistency may be explained by the influence of anxiety (state and trait) on the blood pressure response to stress. Therefore, this study sought to determine whether anxiety is associated with blood pressure response to cold pressor (CP) and anger recall (AR) stress tests in young healthy African Americans. Modeling using state and trait anxiety revealed that state anxiety predicts systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure DBP response to CP and AR (P≤0.02). Interestingly, state anxiety predicted heart rate changes only to CP (P<0.01;P=0.3for AR). Although trait anxiety was associated with SBP response to AR and not CP, it was not a significant predictor of reactivity in our models. We conclude that anxiety levels may contribute to the variable blood pressure response to acute stressors and, therefore, should be assessed when performing cardiovascular reactivity measures.


Author(s):  
Timothy J Meeker ◽  
Nichole M. Emerson ◽  
Jui-Hong Chien ◽  
Mark I. Saffer ◽  
Oscar Joseph Bienvenu ◽  
...  

A pathological increase in vigilance, or hypervigilance, may be related to pain intensity in some clinical pain syndromes and may result from attention bias to salient stimuli mediated by anxiety. During a continuous performance task where subjects discriminated painful target stimuli from painful nontargets, we measured detected targets (hits), nondetected targets (misses), nondetected nontargets (correct rejections), and detected nontargets (false alarms). Using signal detection theory, we calculated response bias, the tendency to endorse a stimulus as a target, and discriminability, the ability to discriminate a target from nontarget. Due to the relatively slow rate of stimulus presentation our primary hypothesis was that sustained performance would result in a more conservative response bias reflecting a lower response rate over time on task. We found a more conservative response bias with time on task and no change in discriminability. We predicted that greater state and trait anxiety would lead to a more liberal response bias. A multivariable model provided partial support for our prediction; high trait anxiety related to a more conservative response bias (lower response rate), while high state anxiety related to a more liberal bias. This inverse relationship of state and trait anxiety is consistent with reports of effects of state and trait anxiety on reaction times to threatening stimuli. In sum, we report that sustained attention to painful stimuli was associated with a decrease in the tendency of the subject to respond to any stimulus over time on task, while the ability to discriminate target from nontarget is unchanged.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Woznica

This study extended research on the specificity of the effects of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) challenge by examining panic reactivity in participants with bulimia nervosa (BN) (n=15) compared to those without bulimia nervosa (n=31). All participants completed self-report measures assessing state and trait anxiety, depression, anxiety sensitivity (AS), distress tolerance (DT), discomfort intolerance (DI), and eating disorder features. They subsequently breathed two vital capacity inhalations; room air and 35% CO₂-enriched air. Reactivity to room air was not different between groups. However, participants with BN displayed greater reactivity to CO₂ compared to the participants with BN. AS, DI, and DT could not be tested as potential mediators in the association between diagnostic group and reactivity because these constructs were not associated with reactivity. Eating disorder features and frequency of binges and purges were also not associated with reactivity. Detailed implications and suggestions for further research are discussed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 3439
Author(s):  
İbrahim Güneş ◽  
Zeliha Özsoy Güneş

With this study were aimed the investigation of the state and trait anxiety levels of Electric-Electronic Engineering students on High Voltage Laboratory anxiety. This research is designed as relational scanning model. The samples of the study comprised 113 students from Electric-Electronic Engineering in Engineering Faculty. In the study; “High Voltage Laboratory Anxiety Scale” with three factors which was developed by Güneş and Özsoy-Güneş (2015) and “The State and Trait Anxiety Scale” was developed by Spielberger and his colleagues (1970), adapted to Turkish by Öner and Le Compte (1985) are used as tool of data collection. In order to analyze the data, SPSS 20.00, Pearson correlation coefficient techniques and regression analysis techniques are used. At the end of the study, between all scales has a positive relation. Multiple linear regression analysis showed that the trait anxiety and laboratory anxiety of students has been found to be effective on the state anxiety of students.


2021 ◽  
pp. 000992282110406
Author(s):  
Zeynep Reyhan Onay ◽  
Tugba Ramasli Gursoy ◽  
Tugba Sismanlar Eyuboglu ◽  
Ayse Tana Aslan ◽  
Azime Sebnem Soysal Acar ◽  
...  

We aim to evaluate the anxiety levels of caregivers of children with tracheostomy during the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic. Caregivers of 31 children with tracheostomy and 105 healthy children (control group) were included. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was administered via teleconference in order to investigate how participants describe how they feel at a particular moment (State) and how they generally feel (Trait). The trait anxiety levels of caregivers of children with tracheostomy were significantly higher ( P = .02). Their state anxiety levels were similar. The state and trait anxiety levels of caregivers of children with tracheostomy correlated ( r = 0.70, P < .001). At the end of the teleconference, caregivers of children with tracheostomy experienced greater anxiety relief than controls ( P < .001). Trait anxiety scores were higher among caregivers of children with tracheostomy, but their state anxiety levels were comparable to those of controls. Caregivers with high trait anxiety also exhibited high state anxiety. Informing caregivers of children with tracheostomy about COVID-19 via teleconference can reduce their anxiety during such stressful times.


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