The Northwestern-UCLA youth emotion project: Associations of cognitive vulnerabilities, neuroticism and gender with past diagnoses of emotional disorders in adolescents

Abstract

Neuroticism has been hypothesized to be a nonspecific risk factor for both anxiety and unipolar mood disorders whereas some cognitive and personality-cognitive vulnerabilities have been hypothesized to be more specific to depression. Using a retrospective design with a sample of 575 high school juniors, we tested three competing models of the associations among these variables. Both neuroticism and the cognitive and personality-cognitive vulnerabilities had significant zero-order associations with rates of past diagnoses of both anxiety and unipolar mood disorders. Neuroticism had significant unique associations with past anxiety disorders and comorbid anxiety and unipolar mood disorders whereas the other vulnerabilities did not. In addition, gender interacted with neuroticism but not with the other vulnerabilities in associating with past diagnoses of mood disorders, showing that neuroticism is more highly associated with past unipolar mood diagnoses in males than in females. Finally, the cognitive and personality-cognitive vulnerabilities overlapped with substantial portions of the variance that neuroticism shared with diagnoses. These results suggest that, at least for retrospective associations with past anxiety and unipolar mood disorders, the cognitive and other personality-cognitive vulnerabilities are non-specific facets of neuroticism. Keywords neuroticism; cognitive vulnerability; anxiety disorders; mood disordersCorrespondence concerning this article should be addressed to either Richard Zinbarg, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, 2029 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, Illinois 60208; rzinbarg@northwestern.edu, or Susan Mineka, Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, 2029 Sheridan Rd., Evanston, Illinois 60208; mineka@northwestern.edu. James Griffith is now at the Department of Medical Social Sciences, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Department of Medical Social Sciences, Chicago, Illinois. Allison Waters is now at the School of Psychology, Griffith University, Australia. Nilly Mor is now at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptBehav Res Ther. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 May 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptSeveral personality and cognitive vulnerability models for anxiety and unipolar mood disorders have been proposed in the past few decades. Some variables such as neuroticism (N) have been proposed as a common vulnerability for all, or nearly all, of these emotional disorders, ...

Associations between self-reported discrimination and diurnal cortisol rhythms among young adults: The moderating role of racial–ethnic minority status

“…A complete description of this project's participants and recruitment procedures are reported by Zinbarg et al (2010). High school juniors from two diverse public high schools in suburban Chicago and Los Angeles were screened and selected for the study based on their neuroticism score from the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Eysenck et al, 1985).…”

Acquisition of behavioral avoidance: Task-irrelevant conditioned stimuli trigger costly decisions.

“…Yet, fear conditioning resulted in avoidant decisions. Individuals who are at risk or have already developed an anxiety disorder will most likely exhibit even higher levels of vulnerability (Zinbarg et al, 2010). Hence, aversive experience may even yield a more pronounced impact in individuals at risk for or suffering from anxiety disorders.…”

Effects of the serotonin transporter polymorphism and history of major depression on overgeneral autobiographical memory

“…The goal of the current study was to evaluate the association between 5-HTTLPR and OGM in 370 young adult participants in the Northwestern-UCLA Youth Emotion Project (YEP), a longitudinal study of risk for emotional disorders (see Zinbarg et al, 2010 for details). We hypothesized that OGM would be greatest in those with a genetic serotonergic vulnerability (i.e., those with the S allele of 5-HTTLPR) and a history of MDD.…”