Information integration and emotion: How do anxiety sensitivity and expectancy combine to determine social anxiety?

Abstract

Relatively little is known about the integration of people's fear-related dispositions and their expectations about stressful events. This research used information integration theory to examine how participants' anxiety sensitivity and event expectancy are integrated to determine their social anxiety. Three studies were conducted*two with university students and one with anxiety clinic patients*in which participants were presented with multiple scenarios of a socially embarrassing event, each representing a different degree of event probability, from which subjective expectancies were derived. Independent variables included anxiety sensitivity (low, moderate, high) and event expectancy (low, medium, high, no probability information). Participants were asked to indicate their anxiety (dependent measure) in each expectancy condition in this 3)4 mixed, quasiexperimental design. The results of all three studies strongly suggest that anxiety sensitivity and event expectancy are integrated additively to produce social anxiety. Additional results and their implications for the treatment of anxiety-related disorders are also discussed.

How are expectancies and values cognitively combined to determine behavioral intentions? The role of expectancy‐value theory, information integration and behavioral outcomes in dietary intentions

“…Although consistent with similar IIT research on anxiety (Chung et al, 2005;Kennedy et al, 2011;Moore et al, 2009), the additive integration patterns found in the present study differ from the multiplicative integration rules found in prior IIT research examining EV models in other domains (e.g., Klitzner & Anderson, 1977;Schlottmann, 2001;Shanteau, 1974). One potential explanation for this difference may be that previous EV studies using IIT had participants evaluate outcomes directly (e.g., personal worth of lottery tickets), while the current research modeled participants' dietary intentions as a function of outcome expectancies and values.…”

Objective and perceived arousal during performance of tasks with elements of social threat: The influence of anxiety sensitivity

“…Anxiety sensitivity has been empirically associated with trait social anxiety in clinical and non-clinical samples (Anderson & Hope, 2009;Carleton, Abrams, Asmundson, Antony, & McCabe, 2009;Moore, Chung, Peterson, Katzman, & Vermani, 2009), and both constructs have been associated with heightened perceptions of arousal. Therefore, it may be possible that anxiety sensitivity explains, at least in part, why individuals with greater trait social anxiety experience exaggerated perceptions of arousal and exacerbated anxiety when facing potential social threats.…”

Incurious Motives to Seek Information about Potential Threats

“…These findings also provided additional evidence that focusing of experiences of distress are meaningfully distinct from focusing on achieving relief, and involve psychologically different methods of responding to potentially threatening information. Accordingly, it will also be important in future research to explore potential relationships between the IWRM measures and other measures of constructs that reflect generalized tendencies to avoid new information, such as intolerance of uncertainty (Dugas, Gagnon, et al, 1998) and anxiety sensitivity (Moore, Chung, Peterson, Katzman, & Vermani, 2009), or to seek out new information, such as need for cognition (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) or the Big Five concept of openness (McCrae & Costa, 1999) in order to determine how these variables interact with IWRM tendencies.…”