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Experiential avoidance in idiographic, autobiographical memories: Construct validity and links to social anxiety, depressive, and anger symptoms
Abstract
Experiential avoidance, or attempts to alter or avoid undesirable thoughts and feelings, has been theorized to be relevant to the development of emotional disturbances, particularly anxiety problems. Prior work has relied on two methodologies: global self-report measures or laboratory manipulations. To better understand links between experiential avoidance and emotional disturbances, we measured experiential avoidance in the context of prominent anxious autobiographical events. Trained raters coded events for emotionality and reliance on experiential avoidance. Our interest was whether experiential avoidance could be measured as a memory characteristic and how it relates to social anxiety, depressive, and anger symptoms. As evidence of construct validity, experiential avoidance ratings were related to more intense negative emotions and coping difficulties during anxious events, memory vividness, and emotion suppression tendencies. Experiential avoidance was positively related to social anxiety and depressive symptoms and predicted an increase in social anxiety over a 3-month period; findings could not be attributed to the emotionality of memories. In contrast, no relations were found with inward or outward expressions of anger, or longitudinal change in depressive or anger symptoms. Results suggest that experiential avoidance is an important dimension of people's life narratives and particularly relevant to social anxiety problems.
... Other researchers also point to avoidant behavior and its links to social anxiety. The findings of a study by Kashdan et al., (2010), found an association between avoidance and an increase in social anxiety (rather than depression or anger) over 3 months [55]. Thus, we can hypothesize that adolescents with severe anxiety may also experience increased avoidance in the future. ...
... Other researchers also point to avoidant behavior and its links to social anxiety. The findings of a study by Kashdan et al., (2010), found an association between avoidance and an increase in social anxiety (rather than depression or anger) over 3 months [55]. Thus, we can hypothesize that adolescents with severe anxiety may also experience increased avoidance in the future. ...
Background:
Studies show that social anxiety in adolescence have negative impact on quality of life. The study evaluates social anxiety links with mental and physical health factors in adolescents aged 15-19 years.
Methods:
The research was performed in 2018 in secondary schools in Lithuania and included 1722 participants (46.1% males and 53.9% females). The social anxiety was assessed using Social Anxiety and Avoidance Scale for Adolescents. The main results were obtained using univariate and multivariate logistic regression analysis.
Results:
Total of 58.5% of adolescents were characterized by high social anxiety and 14.7% by high avoidance. Females more often were characterized by high anxiety compared to males. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that good mental health was a significant protective factor against high SA in adolescents. For females, high anxiety and avoidance were associated with living with both parents, for males, high anxiety was linked with mother's university education. Very common stomach and abdominal pain in females as well as severe and very common stomach or abdominal pain in males, increase the risk of major social anxiety.
Conclusions:
High social anxiety were more prevalent between females than males and was linked with various well-being and health aspects in adolescents.
... Our findings revealed fewer emotional facial expressions in participants with high experiential avoidance than in those with low experiential avoidance during autobiographical retrieval. Experiential avoidance, or attempts to control or suppress unwanted feelings and emotions (Hayes et al., 1996;Purdon, 1999), has found to be related with social withdrawal and depression (Buckner et al., 2014;Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010;Mahaffey, Wheaton, Fabricant, Berman, & Abramowitz, 2013;Panayiotou, Karekla, & Panayiotou, 2014). More specifically, experiential avoidance acts as a barrier to pursuing and enjoying meaningful social interactions (Kashdan et al., 2010). ...
... Experiential avoidance, or attempts to control or suppress unwanted feelings and emotions (Hayes et al., 1996;Purdon, 1999), has found to be related with social withdrawal and depression (Buckner et al., 2014;Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010;Mahaffey, Wheaton, Fabricant, Berman, & Abramowitz, 2013;Panayiotou, Karekla, & Panayiotou, 2014). More specifically, experiential avoidance acts as a barrier to pursuing and enjoying meaningful social interactions (Kashdan et al., 2010). Some researchers have shown that experiential avoidance is associated with few approach-oriented behaviours, such as inability to introduce oneself to others (Chawla & Ostafin, 2007;Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006). ...
Experiential avoidance refers to attempts to control or suppress unwanted thoughts, feelings and emotions. We investigated whether experiential avoidance is associated with fewer facial expressions during autobiographical retrieval (i.e. retrieval of memory for personal information). We invited participants to retrieve autobiographical memories, and recall was analysed by a facial analysis software that detects and classifies emotional expressions. Participants were divided into high vs. low experiential avoidance. Analysis showed fewer emotional facial expressions in participants with high experiential avoidance than in those with low experiential avoidance during autobiographical retrieval. This low emotional expression can be regarded as an attempt by individuals with high experiential avoidance to avoid communicating the emotional load to others. This low emotional expression can be also regarded as an attempt by individuals with high experiential avoidance to control or suppress the internal events that contribute to the appearance or persistence of unwanted emotional states during retrieval.
... It has been shown that, in healthy participants, less specific autobiographical memories correlate with a variety of thoughts, feelings and even situation avoidance strategies (Hermans et al., 2005). The AAQ-II is a measure of experiential avoidance, which refers to the general tendency of individuals to feel uncomfortable and enmeshed in their own internal experiences, and which has previously been used in studies investigating the relationship between avoidance and less specific memories (Hermans et al., 2005;Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010;Raes, Williams, & Hermans, 2009;Spinhoven, Bamelis, Molendijk, Haringsma, & Arntz, 2009). On the other hand, the CAQ, which has also been shown to be correlated with reduced memory specificity in clinical and non-clinical samples (Gandolphe, Nandrino, Hancart, & Vosgien, 2013), assesses the extent to which individuals resort to cognitive strategies to escape disturbing experiences. ...
... In middle-aged adults, the level of experiential avoidance, as assessed by the AAQ-II, contributed negatively to the specificity of future thoughts set in a distant future and induced by negative cue words. This result extends previous findings on the role of experiential avoidanceunwillingness to be in contact with private and undesirable experiences (Hayes et al., 1996) in the lack of memory specificity in both clinical (Kashdan et al., 2010;Raes et al., 2009;Spinhoven et al., 2009) and non-clinical samples (Hermans et al., 2005). In addition, the negative contribution of experiential avoidance to the specificity of future-oriented thoughts seems to confirm the assumption that reduced specificity could be a way of lessening the emotional impact of certain mental projections, not only when remembering past events (e.g., Hermans et al., 2008;Raes et al., 2003;Williams, 1996) but also when imagining future ones, at least in a distant future induced by negative cue words. ...
Future thinking in older adults is characterised by a lack of specificity of imagined events and by
an equal or even higher subjective experience, compared to younger adults. We considered
whether this lack of specificity stemmed partly from the avoidance of a somewhat disturbing
future and then examined the extent to which certain types of emotion-regulation strategies,
namely positive reappraisal and positive refocusing, contributed to the subjective experience
of future thinking. Middle-aged and older adults completed an adapted version of the AMT,
in which temporal distance and cue word valence were manipulated, thus resulting in future
conditions assumed to represent varying degrees of discomfort. Results indicate that distant
future and negative cues restricted both the specificity and the subjective experience of
future thinking. In addition, the use of avoidance strategies predicted the nature of future
thoughts in the context of a supposed uncomfortable future (i.e., a distant future induced by
negative cues), although it followed quite different age-related patterns. Together with the
findings that positive reappraisal and positive refocusing (to a lesser extent) contributed to
the subjective experience of future thinking, this study indicates that how individuals imagine
their personal future also relies on affect- and emotion-regulation strategies.
... Given the lack of significant edges at either time point, it seems anger was not associated with avoidance behaviors in this sample. A previous study on experiential avoidance found no relations with outward or inward anger expressions (Kashdan et al., 2010). Anger is unique among emotions in that it can trigger both avoidance and approach motivation (Aarts et al., 2010). ...
... In contrast, experiential avoidance, or the refusal to attend to or acknowledge a thought or emotion that arises Cardaciotto et. al., 2008) can be highly detrimental on long-term health and well-being (Kashdan et al., 2010;Mellick et al., 2019;Spinhoven et al., 2014;Tyndall et al., 2018). Therefore, an empirical test of relations among mindfulness, smartphone use, and smartphone involvement is needed to address these critical concerns. ...
Objectives
Previous research has shown the capacity for mindfulness to be strongly associated with psychological well-being, that components of mindfulness show significant growth through young adulthood, and that this developing, malleable capacity is vital as individuals learn to deal appropriately with negative thoughts and unwelcome emotions. Smartphones, typically used in an automatic or experientially avoidant way, can undermine this development, leading to a decreased capacity for mindfulness. The purpose of these studies were to examine the extent to which smartphone use is negatively associated with young adults’ mindfulness and the degree to which increased cognitive and behavioral involvement with smartphones may exacerbate this relation using a newly developed conceptual model.
Method
Study 1 was conducted using self-report measures of mindfulness among a cross-sectional sample of university students aged 18–20 years (n = 668). Study 2 augmented Study 1 using objective measures of smartphone screen time and the cognitive regulatory components of mindfulness in a planned missingness design.
Results
Results indicate smartphone involvement (a compulsive pattern of use and cognitive preoccupation with one’s smartphone) to be significantly associated with lower trait mindfulness. Additionally, exploratory analysis of smartphone involvement as a mediator of the effect of smartphone use on mindfulness demonstrated a significant estimated indirect effect.
Conclusion
These results provide preliminary empirical support for the newly proposed conceptual model which posits associations between mindfulness and the use of smartphones in a cognitively and behaviorally involved way.
Preregistration
This study is not preregistered.
... It has been found that EA readily provokes paradoxical effects, increasing the intensity and occurrence of the internal events a person is trying to prevent [13]. Numerous studies have linked EA with social anxiety, reporting significant positive associations [e.g., [14][15][16][17]. These findings have contributed to important adjustments in the treatment of SAD, resulting in an increased implementation of mindfulness-and acceptancebased interventions [e.g., 14]. ...
Both anxiety sensitivity (AS) and experiential avoidance (EA) have been linked to social anxiety disorder (SAD). However, previous studies did not consider their joint variance and the heterogeneity of SAD. In this mixed methods cross-sectional survey, we examined 121 online participants (age range: 16–70 years) who self-reported as socially anxious. We compared AS and EA levels in individuals with a primary fear of noticeable anxiety symptoms vs. behaving ineptly. AS and EA were highly prevalent across the sample. Surprisingly, the noticeable symptoms subtype showed slightly lower AS and EA levels than the inept behavior subtype. The noticeable symptoms subtype scored notably lower on social anxiety measures (mean = 69.8) than the inept behavior subtype (mean = 89.3). EA was uniquely associated with social anxiety in both subtypes, while AS was uniquely associated with social anxiety only in the inept behavior subtype. The joint variance explained substantially more of the noticeable symptoms subtype’s social anxiety (32.5%) compared to the inept behavior subtype’s (9.4%). Qualitative themes aligned with these findings, indicating a self-reinforcing dynamic between high AS, high EA, and social anxiety symptoms. Potential clinical implications are discussed. Future research should examine causality in the AS-EA-SAD dynamic, considering the heterogeneity of SAD.
... Friendship with a social chatbot is vital for individuals who avoid social interactions due to concerns about others' criticism or evaluations (Kashdan et al., 2010). As social needs are inevitable, socially anxious individuals want to build relationships with social chatbots to feel connected and valued. ...
This study investigates the impact of social interaction anxiety on compulsive chat with a social chatbot named Xiaoice. To provide insights into the limited literature, the authors explore the role of fear of negative evaluation (FONE) and fear of rejection (FOR) as mediators in this relationship. By applying a variance-based structural equation modeling on a non-clinical sample of 366 Chinese university students who have interacted with Xiaoice, the authors find that social interaction anxiety increases compulsive chat with a social chatbot both directly and indirectly through fear of negative evaluation and rejection, with a more substantial effect of the former. The mediating effect of fear of negative evaluation transfers through fear of rejection, which establishes a serial link between social interaction anxiety and compulsive chat with a social chatbot. Further, frustration about unavailability (FAU) strengthens the relationship between FOR and compulsive chat with a social chatbot (CCSC). These findings offer theoretical and practical insights into our understanding of the process by which social interaction anxiety influences chat behavior with a social chatbot.
... [ Downloaded from sjimu.medilam.ac.ir on 2022-[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] ...
... For example, individuals with elevated fatigue sensitivity may be more apt to engage in experiential avoidance of fatigue-provoking stimuli (e.g., social activities, exercise) in an effort to downregulate distress or concerns associated with such symptoms [e.g., "When I feel sluggish, I am afraid that people will judge me negatively" ; 14]. Experiential avoidance, in turn, has been found to be associated with greater subjective distress and coping difficulties [30], increasing risk for mental health severity. Moreover, a specific experiential avoidance tactic frequently evidenced by this population in an effort to self-medicate, is alcohol use [31][32][33][34]. ...
Background
Firefighters are faced with numerous work-related demands and stressors, including exposure to potentially traumatic events, and are thus at an increased risk for poor mental health outcomes. To better understand the mental health of trauma-exposed firefighters, the current study sought to examine the association of fatigue sensitivity with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depressive symptom severity in a cross-sectional study design.
Methods
Participants included 107 (Mage = 40.8 years; SDage = 8.95; age range: 21–67 years; 95.0% male) trauma-exposed firefighters.
Results
Findings from the current study indicated that fatigue sensitivity was a statistically significant clinical correlate of PTSD, anxiety, and depressive symptom severity. The statistically significant incremental effects were small to medium across the mental health variables, but evident after accounting for years in the fire service, sleep quality, and trauma load.
Conclusions
The present data provide initial empirical evidence for the role of fatigue sensitivity in terms of a broad range of mental health indices among trauma-exposed firefighters.
... Likewise, contingent individuals are vulnerable to FoMO, which is defined as a feeling of worry or loss when knowing that others have it better than them (Przybylski et al. 2013;Dhir et al. 2018). These individuals experience difficulty during social interactions, particularly in a physical environment (Kashdan et al. 2010;Lee et al. 2014). In this context, Przybylski et al. (2013) indicated that FoMO mediates socially anxious individuals' unmet social relatedness needs through social media. ...
This research examines the impact of contingent self-esteem on compulsive usage of social media application WeChat in China. The authors attempt to identify the channels based on self-verification and self-determination theory and propose that fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and fear of missing out (FoMO) transfer the impact of contingent self-esteem (CSE) to compulsive WeChat usage (CWU). Additionally, these relationships were tested with frustration about unavailability (FaU) as a moderator in the framework to explain the phenomenon. By employing a convenience method, 396 samples of Chinese students were analyzed. The analyses indicate that CSE contributes to CWU directly and indirectly through FNE and FoMO. Furthermore, FNE mediates the link between CSE and FoMO, ultimately transferring the effect of CSE to CWU in series. These results can enhance our knowledge of how CSE affects CWU, a growing problem among young people today. Our results may guide psychologists to prepare a counselling programme for compulsive social media users and help them overcome social interaction fears in the real world.
... First, anxiety disorders are among the most common psychological disorders, with lifetime prevalence rates estimated to be as high as 28.8% in the general population (Kessler et al., 2005), and rank as the 6th leading cause of disability worldwide (Baxter et al., 2014). Second, there is a strong theoretical association between EA and anxiety which has received a considerable amount of empirical support, both for anxiety broadly (e.g., Kashdan et al., 2008;Tull & Roemer, 2008) as well as for specific anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder (Roemer et al., 2005), panic disorder (Gloster et al., 2011), posttraumatic stress disorder (Kashdan et al., 2009), social anxiety disorder (Kashdan et al., 2009(Kashdan et al., , 2010, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (Blakely et al., 2015). Finally, the relationships of anxiety disorders with these predictors is well-established in the literature (e.g., Baxter et al., 2014;Kotov et al., 2010;Olatunji et al., 2007). ...
Experiential avoidance is conceptualized as a core psychopathological process in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Much of the empirical support for the theoretical conceptualization and efficacy of ACT interventions is based on operationally defining experiential avoidance as scores on the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II; Bond et al., 2011) and its predecessor, the AAQ (Hayes et al., 2004). However, both measures have been criticized for exhibiting poor discriminant validity from measures of related constructs. The present study sought to evaluate the incremental predictive validity of the AAQ-II for symptoms of panic, social anxiety, generalized anxiety, obsessive compulsive, and posttraumatic stress disorders after controlling for neuroticism, functional impairment, life satisfaction, anxiety sensitivity, quality of life, positive and negative affect, and distress tolerance in a large sample of adults (n = 552). A series of hierarchical regression analyses revealed that AAQ-II scores uniquely predicted anxiety symptoms over and above measures of related constructs for all outcomes except social anxiety. Relative weights analysis revealed that the AAQ-II accounted for 10.5–17.5% of the variance in outcome scores explained by regression models and emerged as one of the top three predictors by relative weight in all five models. The present findings support the empirical and clinical utility of the AAQ-II and indicate that its predictive power for anxiety disorder symptomology is not simply attributable to overlap with measures of related constructs.
... Expressive suppression, which is the conscious inhibition of emotional arousal and expression, often maintains unwanted thoughts or feelings and has been associated with greater internalizing difficulties (Haga et al., 2009;Zahniser & Conley, 2018). Rumination, as well as cognitive and behavioral avoidance, prevents active engagement with distress-producing stimuli, and research shows that the use of these strategies is often associated with internalizing and externalizing symptoms (Aldao et al., 2010;Grant et al., 2013;Hofmann & Hay, 2018;Kashdan et al., 2010;Lovibond et al., 2009;Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008;du Pont et al., 2019). ...
Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is a form of child maltreatment which has been increasingly recognized as a common experience among men. Research on male CSA remains under-developed but suggests many negative mental health impacts. The current study examined the link between mental health outcomes and different emotion regulation strategies among 69 adult men. Men completed measures on their current mental well-being, and participated in a clinical interview about emotion regulation strategies used to manage memories about their sexual victimization. Results indicated that the most frequently used emotion regulation strategies were expressive suppression, rumination, and cognitive avoidance. For perceived effectiveness, men identified cognitive avoidance, self-medication, and behavioral avoidance as being most helpful in managing their CSA-related distress. Finally, greater use of deliberate self-harm, rumination, and behavioral avoidance was associated with more internalizing difficulties, while greater use of deliberate self-harm and self-medication was linked with more externalizing difficulties. Greater perceived efficacy of positive reappraisal was associated with fewer externalizing behaviors. Although these findings require replication through larger mixed-methods studies, they suggest the importance of incorporating emotion regulation strategies into interventions aimed at improving mental well-being among men with CSA histories.
... Frustration about unavailability can be described here as people's tendency to worry when they sense isolation, abandonment, or inaccessibility to close ones . Anxiously attached people value relationships and prefer to be socially present, relying on other people, and fearing distance from their dear ones (Kashdan et al., 2010). In this regard, Lee et al. (2014) noted that people who place high importance on others are more likely to seek connectedness and positive remarks from their dear ones to feel valued, and get frustrated when their family or friends are distant or unavailable. ...
This study investigates the impact of social interaction anxiety on compulsive social media usage. To provide insights into the gaps in previous research, the authors identify the channels, and hypothesize that negative evaluation and rejection fears mediate the relationship between social interaction anxiety and compulsive social media usage. Further, the moderating role of frustration about unavailability and gender differences are considered in the framework for robustness purposes. Using a convenience sampling method and variance-based structural equation modeling, the authors analyzed a non-clinical sample of 402 Chinese university students. Survey results find that social interaction anxiety increases compulsive social media usage both directly and indirectly through fear of negative evaluation and fear of rejection with a stronger effect of the former. Moreover, the mediating effect of fear of negative evaluation transfers through fear of rejection, which establishes a serial link between social interaction anxiety and compulsive social media usage. Interestingly, frustration about unavailability strengthens the relationship only between fear of rejection and compulsive social media usage. Females exhibit more social interaction anxiety and fear of negative evaluation, which lead them to become more compulsive social media users, while males experience more fear of rejection. These findings can improve our understanding of the role and process by which social interaction anxiety influences compulsive social media usage, and thus may help psychologists to develop better counseling programs for compulsive male and female social media users, addressing their social interaction deficits and excessive reliance on social media applications.
... Several studies have shown that experiential avoidance is associated with wide range of psychopathology, including anxiety, depression, mood disorder, substance abuse, personality disorders (Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006;Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010;Twohig & Hayes, 2008;Kingston, Clarke, & Remington, 2010) and namely anxiety, affective and conduct problems in adolescents (Venta, Sharp, & Hart, 2012). The decrease in experiential avoidance is associated to improvements in functioning and quality of life (Chawla & Ostafin, 2007;Hayes et al., 1996;Kashdan, Barrios, Forsyth, & Steger, 2006). ...
Introduction: Mental health literacy, compassion and psychological flexibility have been emphasized as factors with a significant role in the prevention and treatment of psychological disorders, such as, depression and anxiety. There is dearth of literature addressing and relating this factors in adolescents and the patterns of its associations regarding gender. The aim was to study association between mental health literacy, depressive and anxious symptoms, psychological inflexibility and fear of compassion in a sample of adolescents, taking into consideration gender differences. Methods: Participants were 253 adolescents from high schools, 127 male and 126 female subjects. The participants completed self-report measures of mental health literacy, fears of compassion, psychological flexibility and psychopathological symptoms. Results: The results revealed statistically significant differences between the genders in the means of the study variables with females presenting higher averages in all these variables. The correlation analysis presents the same pattern of relationship between the different variables for subjects of both genders. Experiential avoidance is significantly associated with mental health literacy and the experience of depressive and anxious symptomatology, which in turn is significantly correlated with the experience of the three factors of the compassionate fears (p≤ 0.01). In regression analyses, experiential avoidance emerges in the model as the only significant predictor contributing to the model explaining 37% of the variance of the dependent variable in males and 41% in females. Conclusions: Overall, these results suggest that higher levels of mental health illiteracy are associated with higher levels of anxiety and depression and experiential avoidance in females, at the same time, it turns out greater experience of fears of compassion.
... A considerable body of research suggests that experiential avoidance has been associated with a wide range of mental health issues, such as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; Newman & Llera, 2011), anxiety sensitivity (Tull & Gratz, 2008), depression and avoidance of shame memories (Dinis, 2015), and social anxiety disorder (Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010;Kashdan et al., 2009). Furthermore, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999) targets experiential avoidance, and promotes the tendency to fully experience what is happening in the present moment instead of avoiding them and to act according to one's chosen values. ...
Theoretical accounts and preliminary evidence suggest that Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) improve cognitive function, but reviews of empirical studies have provided mixed results. To clarify empirical evidence, we conducted a meta-analysis of 25 studies (n = 1439) and examined the effects of MBIs on four cognitive domains: attention, working memory, long-term memory, and executive function. The summary effect sizes indicate that MBIs produce non-significant effects on attention (SMD = 0.07), working memory (SMD = 0.16), and long-term memory (SMD = −0.12), while a small effect was observed for executive function (SMD = 0.29). Given significant heterogeneity across studies, we conducted meta-regression analyses with sample characteristics, age, number of treatment sessions, treatment duration, intervention type, control group type, and study design. We found moderating effects of intervention type on attention and executive function. Although the current study highlights preliminary evidence for improvements in executive function, overall results suggest non-significant findings for attention, working memory, and long-term memory. To draw a firm conclusion, further research is needed to address methodological challenges in meta-analysis and the limitations of existing studies.
... Tıpkı bastırmada olduğu gibi kaçınma stratejisinde de anlık olarak rahatlama sağlansa da uzun vadede kaçınılmaya çalışılan duygu ve düşüncelerin daha fazla deneyimlenmesi söz konusudur. 48 TSSB'nin psikolojik modellerinin neredeyse tümü (korku ağı modeli, ikili temsil modeli, bilişsel model, iki faktörlü yaklaşım) aşırı kullanılan kaçınma stratejisinin travmatik yaşam olayının bilgi işleme süreçlerinden geçirilerek otobiyografik bellekte depolanmasını engellediğini vurgulamaktadır. Öte yandan kaçınmalar arttıkça kişinin gündelik hayatını sürdürmesi, sosyal ve mesleki sorumluluklarını yerine getirmesi de zorlaşmaktadır. ...
55 55 T ravma Sonrası Stres Bozukluğu (TSSB)'nda duygu düzenlemede yaşanan güç-lüğün önemli sürdürücü faktörlerden biri olduğu bilinmektedir. 1 Ayrıca, duygu düzenleme güçlüğünün TSSB tedavisinin etkililiği konusunda da önemli bir dü-zenleyici değişken olabileceği belirtilmiştir. 2 Bu derlemede, TSSB tanısı almış kişiler-deki duygular, duygu düzenleme stratejileri ve duygu düzenleme güçlüğünü açıklayan teorik modeller ve araştırma bulguları gözden geçirilmiştir. TRAVmATİK YAŞAm OLAYI VE TSSB Travmatik yaşam olayı beklenmedik bir anda ortaya çıkan, başa çıkma becerilerini aşıp kişiyi çaresiz hissettiren, yoğun bir şekilde korku ve dehşete sebep olan sarsıcı yaşam olaylarıdır. 3 Genel olarak, travmatik durumlar tehlikeli, baş edilemez ve beklenmedik bir zamanda ortaya çıkan yaşantılardır. 4 Amerikan Psikiyatri Birliği'ne (APA) göre trav-matik yaşam olayı gerçek bir ölüm tehdidi, ağır bir yaralanma veya cinsel saldırı gibi fi-ziksel ve zihinsel bütünlüğe karşı bir tehdidin yaşanmasına karşılık gelir. 5 Amerikan Psikiyatri Birliği (APA) tarafından düzenlenip yayınlanan Ruhsal Bozuklukların Tanı-sal ve İstatistiksel Elkitabı-5'e (DSM-5) göre, bu olayların başkasının başına gelmesine Travma Sonrası Stres Bozukluğunda Duygular ve Duygu Düzenleme Emotions and Emotion Regulation Strategies in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder ÖZET Travmatik yaşam olayı beklenmedik bir anda ortaya çıkan, kişiyi çaresiz bırakan, yoğun bir şe-kilde korku ve dehşete sebep olan sarsıcı yaşam olaylarıdır. Travmatik yaşam olayına maruz kalan bi-reylerin önemli bir kısmı zamanla gündelik yaşamlarına uyum sağlayabilmektedir. Bir grup insan ise travmatik olayın olumsuz etkisinden kurtulamamakta, yıllarca sürebilecek ruhsal zorluk yaşayabilmek-tedir. Bu durum tanı ve sınıflama sisteminde Travma Sonrası Stres Bozukluğu (TSSB) olarak adlandı-rılmaktadır. Bugüne kadar yapılan araştırmalar TSSB'nin başlangıcı, sürdürülmesi ve tedavisinde bazı duyguların ve duygu düzenleme stratejilerinin belirleyici rolünün olduğunu göstermiştir. Bu derlemede duygular ve duygu düzenlemenin TSSB ile ilişkisi değerlendirilmiştir. Söz konusu ilişkiler güncel alan yazın ışığında tartışılmıştır. Anah tar Ke li me ler: Travma; duygular; duygu düzenleme; TSSB ABS TRACT Traumatic life events are unexpected, sudden, and shocking life events which can cause intense helplessness, fear, or horror. While the majority of the trauma survivors are able to adjust to their daily lives over time, a minor group of them are not able to get over the effect of the traumatic event. This phenomenon is named as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). To date, researches have shown that some emotions and emotion regulation strategies may have a determining role on the onset, maintenance , and treatment of PTSD. In this review, the relationships between PTSD, emotions, and emotion regulation were evaluated. These relations were discussed in light of current literature.
... Another transdiagnostic construct that has been implicated in the development and maintenance of emotional disorders is experiential avoidance, defined as the unwillingness to remain in contact with uncomfortable internal experience (e.g., thoughts, emotions, sensations, memories, urges) through escape or avoidance (Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996). Self-report studies have demonstrated that individuals with anxiety disorders (Begotka, Woods, & Wetterneck, 2004;Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006;Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010) and depressive disorders (Berking, Neacsiu, Comtois, & Linehan, 2009;Hayes et al., 2006;Shahar & Herr, 2011;Tull, Gratz, Salters, & Roemer, 2004) display high levels of self-reported experiential avoidance. The existing literature also has suggested that experiential avoidance both predicts generalized anxiety disorder symptoms even when the variance associated with frequency of negative affect is parceled out (Lee et al., 2010) and mediates the relationship between neuroticism and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (Maack, Tull, & Gratz, 2012;Pickett, Lodis, Parkhill, & Orcutt, 2012). ...
... A considerable body of research suggests that experiential avoidance has been associated with a wide range of mental health issues, such as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; Newman & Llera, 2011), anxiety sensitivity (Tull & Gratz, 2008), depression and avoidance of shame memories (Dinis, 2015), and social anxiety disorder (Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010;Kashdan et al., 2009). Furthermore, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999) targets experiential avoidance, and promotes the tendency to fully experience what is happening in the present moment instead of avoiding them and to act according to one's chosen values. ...
High co-morbidity among mental disorders indicates that common transdiagnostic mechanisms underlie various psychopathology, yet there has been little research effort to empirically explicate transdiagnostic processes. A few existing studies are limited in the number of transdiagnostic mechanisms and mental disorder categories explored. The current study addresses these limitations by examining the relationship between three transdiagnostic processes (experiential avoidance, rumination, and emotion dysregulation) and symptom severity of five mental disorders (generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, specific phobia, and depression) in a college sample (N=266). Applying Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), three transdiagnostic models were evaluated, with the five latent variables of mental disorder regressed onto each transdiagnostic process. The results showed that all transdiagnostic models--except the emotion dysregulation model--generally fit the data well. Among the tested models, the strongest evidence was found for experiential avoidance as a transdiagnostic mechanism underlying multiple disorders, suggesting the need for further research effort to reduce experiential avoidance in diverse clinical populations.
... Similarly, Mahaffey, Wheaton, Fabricant, Berman, and Abramowitz (2012) examined self-report measures in an undergraduate sample and found a significant association between EA and social anxiety. Using a different methodology, Kashdan, Breen, Afram, and Terhar (2010) examined an undergraduate sample and analyzed their ideographic autobiographical memories. Using trained coders, they assessed memories for EA and found that EA was concurrently associated with social anxiety as well as predicted self-reported social anxiety 3 months later. ...
Previous studies have found that social anxiety and experiential avoidance (EA) are significantly associated, but the directionality of this relationship has not been firmly established. The present study examined momentary EA and social anxiety using repeated measurements during an opposite-sex interaction. Participants were 164 individuals (50% female): 42 were diagnosed with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and the remaining 122 were non-socially-anxious individuals (NSAs). Participants formed 42 experimental dyads including one individual with SAD and one NSA individual, and 40 control dyads including 2 NSA individuals. Lower level mediational modeling indicated that for individuals with SAD, a reciprocal relationship was observed in which changes in both EA and social anxiety mediated changes in each other. However, changes in EA explained approximately 89% of changes in social anxiety whereas changes in social anxiety explained approximately 52% of changes in EA throughout the interaction. For NSA individuals, only social anxiety predicted EA. These findings point to a deleterious cycle driven mostly by EA among individuals with SAD, but not NSA individuals. Findings are discussed within the context of previous empirical findings as well as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and cognitive-behavioral models of psychopathology.
... 14 Kashdan, Breen, Afram, and Terhar (2010) examined the relationship between anger and psychological inflexibility among 148 undergraduates at a Mid-Atlantic U.S. university. Participants were asked to write an autobiographical narrative associated with experiencing anxiety, which was coded for experiential avoidance, coping, and emotional experience. ...
A growing body of literature has begun to examine anger, hostility, and aggression using the psychological flexibility model among both youth and adults. This manuscript provides the first overview of this research. Papers were included in this review if they were published in English, peer-reviewed, published throughDecember 8th 2017 on PsycInfo and PubMed, or were recommended during the review process. The research reviewed examines anger, hostility, and aggression in a variety of contexts, such as interpersonal difficulties, emotional difficulties (e.g., depression, posttraumatic stress disorder), impulse control, and externalizing. The article also reviews Acceptance and Commitment Therapy-based interventions targeting problems related to anger and aggression. Generally, there is support for the psychological flexibility model in this domain and treatment studies have been demonstrated a beneficial impact of ACT on aggression and domestic violence in adults. The literature in youth is extremely limited, although some supportive findings were demonstrated. More extensive and methodologically stronger examinations would strengthen this area of study and are discussed.
... Experiential avoidance has been linked to a wide range of clinically relevant phenomena (Chawla & Ostafin, 2007;Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996). For example, experiential avoidance has been found to be a key process in emotional disorders (Spinhoven, Drost, de Rooij, van Hemert, & Pennix, 2014), depressive symptoms (Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010;Schut & Boelen, 2017), binge eating (Lillis, Hayes, & Levin, 2011), body image disturbance (Blakey, Reuman, Bucholz, & Abramowitz, 2017), social anxiety Kashdan et al., 2013), chronic pain (Karademas et al., 2017), anxiety sensitivity and stress and anxiety (Bardeen et al., 2013;Bardeen, Fergus, & Orcutt, 2014), trauma (Lewis & Naugle, 2017), and post-traumatic stress (Kashdan & Kane, 2011;Thompson & Waltz, 2010). Indeed, there have been a number of proposals for the potential of experiential avoidance to serve as a generalized transdiagnostic measure for 5 psychopathology (e.g., Lewis & Naugle, 2017;Monestès et al., 2017;Spinhoven et al., 2014; but see also Levin et al., 2014, for a similar claim for psychological inflexibility more generally). ...
There exists uncertainty for clinicians over how the separate sub-component processes of psychological flexibility, a core construct of the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy model, interact and influence distress experienced. The present study (N = 567) employed latent class analysis to (i) identify potential classes (i.e., subgroups) of psychological flexibility based on responses on measures of key sub-component process, and (ii) to examine whether such classes could reliably differentiate levels of self-reported psychological distress and positive and negative emotionality. We found three distinct classes: (i) High Psychological Flexibility, (ii) Moderate Psychological Flexibility, and (iii) Low Psychological Flexibility. Those in the Low Psychology Flexibility class reported highest levels of psychological distress, whereas those in the High Psychological Flexibility class subgroup reported lowest levels of psychological distress. This study provides a clearer view to clinicians of the profile of the broader spectrum of the psychological flexibility model to facilitate change in clients.
... Experiential avoidance can become a harmful process if it is largely rule-governed behavior that does not take context into account and is applied rigidly and inflexibly so that a large degree of effort is made to control, or struggle with, private events (i.e., thoughts, feelings, emotions) (Kashdan, Barrios, Forsyth, & Steger, 2006). The cardinal function that experiential avoidance plays in psychological health has been explored in numerous studies (e.g., Fledderus, Bohlmeijer, & Pieterse, 2010;Gerhart, Baker, Hoerger, & Ronan, 2014;Gerhart, Heath, Fitzgerald, & Hoerger, 2013;Kashdan & Breen, 2007;Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010;Kashdan et al., 2013;Machell, Goodman, & Kashdan, 2015;Zettle et al., 2010). For example, in a cross-sectional daily self-report questionnaire study, Kashdan et al. (2006) concluded that experiential avoidance completely mediated the effect of emotion regulation strategies (suppression and reappraisal) on measures of psychological wellbeing. ...
Psychological inflexibility and experiential avoidance are key constructs in the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) model of behavior change. Wolgast (2014) questioned the construct validity of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II), the most used self-report instrument to assess the efficacy of ACT interventions. Wolgast suggested that the AAQ-II measured psychological distress rather than psychological inflexibility and experiential avoidance. The current study further examined the construct validity of the AAQ-II by conducting an online cross-sectional survey (n = 524), including separate measures of experiential avoidance and psychological distress. Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that items from the AAQ-II correlated more highly with measures of depression, anxiety, and stress than the Brief Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire (BEAQ). Implications include that, as broad measures of experiential avoidance, the AAQ-II and BEAQ may not measure the same construct. In terms of psychological distress, the BEAQ has greater discriminant validity than the AAQ-II, and perhaps an alternative instrument of psychological inflexibility might be needed to assess core outcomes in ACT intervention research.
... As an emotion regulation strategy, individuals engage in experiential avoidance in an effort to escape certain aspects of negative and internal emotional experiences (Bond et al. 2011;Hayes et al. 1996). Yet the process of experiential avoidance has been shown to be associated with increased experiences of the avoided affect (Hayes et al. 2004), and a number of studies have revealed associations between experiential avoidance and increased depression (Cribb et al. 2006;Kashdan et al. 2010;Shahar and Herr 2011). Although one might presume that the processes of behavioral and experiential avoidance may be just as relevant to depression in BD, there is surprisingly no published literature of which we are aware evaluating behavioral or experiential avoidance and its role in depression within BD samples. ...
Bipolar disorder (BD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) cannot be reliably differentiated by depression symptom expression alone, suggesting a need to identify processes that may more effectively differentiate the two disorders. To explore this question, currently depressed adults with BD (n = 30) and MDD (n = 30), and healthy control participants with no history of psychiatric illness (CTL; n = 30), completed self-report measures of reward and punishment sensitivity (i.e., behavioral activation and inhibition) and emotion regulation processes (i.e., rumination and avoidance). Results revealed that constructs putatively linked to depression across the mood disorders (i.e., behavioral inhibition, negative rumination, dampening of positive affect, behavioral and experiential avoidance) were significantly higher in both mood disorder groups compared to CTLs. Yet there was also some specificity between mood disorder groups, such that the BD group reported significantly greater reward responsiveness and positive rumination, in addition to greater behavioral inhibition and avoidance, compared to the MDD group. These data suggest that patterns of affective responding previously linked to underlying risk for mania in BD may remain evident during a major depressive episode. Further, current models of reward sensitivity in BD may benefit from the inclusion of punishment sensitivity and behavioral avoidance, particularly with respect to bipolar depression. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
... Numerous potential explanations exist for the high prevalence of ADs among adolescents with IED. Both anger and ADs are associated with deficits in emotion regulation (Fettich, McCloskey, Look, & Coccaro, 2014 Difficulty tolerating negative emotions may help to explain the shared behavioral tendencies among angry and anxious individuals, such as avoiding emotionally evocative stimuli (Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010;Keough et al., 2010) and the use of substances as a coping strategy (Bolton, Cox, Clara, & Sareen, 2006;Buckner et al., 2008;Lejoyeux et al., 1999). This potential explanation is also in line with the reformulated frustration-aggression hypothesis, which posits that frustration results in aggression to the degree that negative emotions are experienced (Berkowitz, 1989). ...
We examined the lifetime prevalence of anxiety disorders (ADs) among adolescents with lifetime intermittent explosive disorder (IED), as well as the impact of co‐occurring ADs on anger attack frequency and persistence, additional comorbidity, impairment, and treatment utilization among adolescents with IED. IED was defined by the occurrence of at least three anger attacks that were disproportionate to the provocation within a single year. Data were drawn from the National Comorbidity Survey‐Adolescent Supplement (N = 6,140), and diagnoses were based on structured lay‐administered interviews. Over half (51.89%) of adolescents with IED had an AD, compared to only 22.88% of adolescents without IED. Compared to adolescents with IED alone, adolescents with IED and comorbid ADs: (a) were more likely to be female; (b) reported greater impairment in work/school, social, and overall functioning; (c) were more likely to receive an additional psychiatric diagnosis, a depressive or drug abuse diagnosis, or diagnoses of three or more additional disorders; and (d) had higher odds of receiving any mental/behavioral health treatment as well as treatment specifically focused on aggression. Adolescents with IED alone and those with comorbid ADs did not differ in the number of years experiencing anger attacks or the highest number of anger attacks in a given year. ADs frequently co‐occur with IED and are associated with elevated comorbidity and greater impairment compared to IED alone. Gaining a better understanding of this comorbidity is essential for developing specialized and effective methods to screen and treat comorbid anxiety in adolescents with aggressive behavior problems.
... One possibility that warrants examination is that low selfawareness (defined here as a lack of awareness of internal experiences, interoceptive signals, other private events and particularly emotions; Duval and Wicklund 1972) in alexithymia may play a central role in its association with emotional disorders, given the fact that such avoidant forms of coping (Panayiotou et al. 2014b) seem to characterize these types of psychopathology as well and play a substantial role in their maintenance (Glick and Orsillo 2011;Hayes et al. 1996;Kashdan et al. 2010). Specifically, even though avoidance produces relief in the short term, in effect, the emotional and experiential avoidance inherent in conditions like anxiety and depression, including thought suppression, cognitive avoidance and directing attention away from threatening events or thoughts (Gross 1998;Gross and John 2003;Nolen-Hoeksema et al. 2008), has paradoxical effects, ultimately increasing the frequency, severity, and accessibility of unwanted experiences (Campbell-Sills et al. 2006), leading to symptom maintenance. ...
Alexithymia’s relation to low awareness of emotion is well-documented: Low self-awareness and the externally oriented thinking style of alexithymia may reflect avoidance of unwanted experiences, a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy. The role that this plays in the association between alexithymia and emotional disorders, including social anxiety, needs to be further explicated. This investigation, examined a) the association between alexithymia and two indices of low awareness of internal experiences, namely low private self-consciousness and experiential avoidance, and between alexithymia and avoidant emotion regulation, specifically suppression b) the hypothesis that low self-awareness (experiential avoidance, low private self-consciousness and suppression) mediates the association between alexithymia and social anxiety, in two student samples. Results indicated, as predicted, that alexithymia is associated with low private self-consciousness, high experiential avoidance and greater use of suppression. The association between alexithymia and social anxiety was mediated through experiential avoidance and partially through low private self-consciousness and suppression. Results suggest that low self-awareness in alexithymia may be related to increased avoidance of internal experiences, which may play a protective role in the short term, but in the long run may contribute to the link between alexithymia and mental health problems.
... The use of experiential avoidance has been implicated in the development and perpetuation of psychopathology (Chawla & Ostafin, 2007;Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996). Indeed, the key role that experiential avoidance plays in psychological health has been explored in numerous studies, both from moderator (e.g., Bardeen, Fergus, & Orcutt, 2013;Bardeen, Fergus, & Orcutt, 2014;Gerhart, Baker, Hoerger, & Ronan, 2014;Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010;Kashdan & Kane, 2011) and mediator (e.g., Fledderus, Bohlmeijer, & Pieterse, 2010) perspectives. Moreover, Karekla and Panayiotou (2011) found that experiential avoidance adds more explanatory value than traditional concepts of coping with distress. ...
Psychological inflexibility has been found to moderate psychological distress following perceived ostracism. Two component processes of psychological inflexibility, experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion, are considered key in exacerbating general emotional distress. The present study (n = 286) examined whether both experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion moderate distress from perceived ostracism or whether one of these processes alone underpins the moderation effect of psychological inflexibility. In a structural equation model analysis, when accounting for both factors, experiential avoidance moderated distress from perceived ostracism alone. Thus, it seems that experiential avoidance is a key driver underlying emotional regulation of psychological distress in the context of perceived ostracism.
... In accordance with predictions, regression analyses showed that avoidance, EA, seeking support and expression of negative feelings were associated with anxiety symptoms across genders. Therefore, both the avoidance of experiences and emotions and their "discharge" (as essentially another form of emotion-intolerance) are associated with anxiety symptoms and their effects are not moderated by gender, highlighting the strong association between such coping approaches and anxiety found previously Kashdan, Breen, Afram & Terhar, 2010;Pickett, Bardeen, Orcutt, 2011). ...
To-date no models adequately address the higher vulnerability of women to anxiety pathology, in contrast to other disorders, such as depression where ruminative thinking has been identified as accounting for women's greater risk. This investigation examines the hypothesis that gender differences in coping, with women relying more on specific types of avoidance, may in part explain women's anxiety risk. Coping, experiential avoidance, anxiety symptoms, anxiety sensitivity and perceived stress due to life stressors were assessed in a community sample (N=456). Women were more likely to meet clinical screening cut-offs for anxiety disorders, report more symptoms and experience greater anxiety sensitivity than men. They also reported greater reliance on avoidant coping and experiential avoidance, which were associated with increased anxiety. Gender moderated coping effects so that the coping style that mostly differentiated women from men in predicting anxiety was behavioral disengagement. To the contrary, self-reported stress due to life events did not significantly explain anxiety gender effects as no significant moderation by gender was observed. Results suggest that greater reliance on avoidance, especially behavioral avoidance, may be associated with increased vulnerability to anxiety specifically among women.
... Using these strategies ultimately produces a maladaptive coping style and, as a result, it is associated with a wide range of psychopathology (e.g., Begotka, Woods, & Wetterneck, 2004;Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010;Kingston, Clarke, & Remington, 2010;Masuda & Tully, 2012). Cognitive fusion, which supports experiential avoidance, occurs when an individual's verbal processes (i.e., thoughts) markedly regulate overt behavior in ineffective ways due to the inability or failure to notice the process of thinking (context) over the products of thinking (content; Hayes et al., 2006;Pierson, Gifford, Smith, Bunting, & Hayes, 2004). ...
There is growing interest in the construct of alexithymia as it has been increasingly associated with a wide range of psychological disorders, in clinical samples and general population. In comparison to studies relating alexithymia and negative affectivity, there has been a scarcity of studies exploring such links with positive emotions. This study aims to explore the association between alexithymia and several discrete positive emotions, and to explore the mediating role of psychological inflexibility-related processes (decentering, experiential avoidance, resistance to feelings of compassion, and self-compassion) in such association.
... One process that warrants examination in this regard is experiential avoidance (EA), defined as rigid behavioral attempts to alter the form, frequency, or intensity of unwanted private events (i.e., thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations) when such behavior impedes valued living (Hayes et al., 2004;Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2012). Evidence suggests that self-reported EA is strongly linked to both anxiety (e.g., Kashdan, Zvolensky, & McLeish, 2008;Tull & Roemer, 2008) and specific anxiety-related disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder (Kashdan, Morina, & Priebe, 2009;Valdez & Lilly, 2012), social anxiety disorder (Kashdan et al., 2009;Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010), and generalized anxiety disorder (Roemer, Salters, Raffa, & Orsillo, 2005). Moreover, behavioral expressions of EA in the context of anxiety disorders (such as emotional and thought suppression and risky behaviors) are associated with negative health consequences. ...
Individuals diagnosed with an anxiety disorder report more physical health problems than those without an anxiety disorder. Few studies have examined the relation of anxiety disorders to later physical health symptoms, or the processes that may explain this relation. One process of interest is experiential avoidance (EA), which is commonly reported in populations characterized by high anxiety and often leads to health-compromising behaviors. The present study examined the relations between anxiety disorder diagnostic status, EA, and physical health symptoms in a community sample of young adult women. Results revealed a significant association between an anxiety disorder diagnosis and physical health problems four months later. Furthermore, levels of EA accounted for this relation. Findings highlight the potential utility of targeting EA as a method for improving health outcomes among individuals with anxiety disorders.
... This is surprising given many contemporary accounts hold that anger follows from events in which personally significant goals are blocked by an external agent's actions. Anger has been the focus of some studies, including those that have focused on trait anger in recalling anxious memories [10] and those that study emotion regulation strategies on anger resulting from anger-related autobiographical memories [11]. These studies have not directly investigated the impact of elicited anger on the nature of autobiographical memories. ...
The impact of anger on autobiographical recall was examined in two studies. In Experiment 1, 76 participants differing in trait anger completed an autobiographical memory task (AMT). In Experiment 2, 50 participants with elevated trait anger were either provoked or not provoked and subsequently completed an AMT. Across both studies, participants with high dispositional anger reported more anger-related memories, describing themselves as the primary agent of anger. In Experiment 2, provoked participants reported more memories describing themselves as the target of anger. These findings highlight the distinct patterns of memory recall associated with trait versus state anger. Findings are discussed in terms of retrieval biases operating in angry individuals and proposals stemming from self-memory system models of autobiographical memory.
... Experiential avoidance describes a tendency to escape or avoid uncomfortable internal experiences such as thoughts, memories, or emotions (Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996). Studies have shown that individuals with anxiety, depressive, and related emotional disorders have high levels of self-reported experiential avoidance and that this construct is strongly associated with a variety of disorders (Begotka, Woods, & Wetterneck, 2004;Berking, Neacsiu, Comtois, & Linehan, 2009;Kashdan, Breen, Afram, & Terhar, 2010;Shahar & Herr, 2011). For example, Lee, Orsillo, Roemer, and Allen (2010) found that after accounting for variance related to frequency of negative affect, experiential avoidance predicts GAD symptoms. ...
For decades, psychology has emphasised salient dimensions of traits or temperaments as the most satisfactory method of organizing conceptions of personality and psychopathology. But the classification of psychopathology continues to gravitate to narrowly defined categorical approaches that influence diagnosis and assessment, as well as treatment development, selection, and administration. Now it seems we are in the midst of a paradigm shift at least for disorders of emotion, where our science has matured to the point that a focus on temperament to support both classification and treatment is emerging. In this article, we review identified commonalities and a putative mechanism of action underlying all disorders of emotion characterised by negative reactions to intense emotional experience. Implications for dimensional assessment and transdiagnostic treatment are presented.
Performance psychology practitioners use a wide range of theories and interventions to improve performance and wellbeing. Often, however, practitioners do not integrate these theories into a model of practice underpinned by a theory of behaviour. Without this foundation, performance programs become patchwork approaches where it is often unclear whether different interventions within a performance program work together or contradict each other. To address this issue, we present a model of behaviour based on functional contextualism and relational frame theory. We then use this model as a framework to integrate mainstream performance psychology and psychophysiology theory in-line with acceptance-based cognitive behavioural approaches to improve performance alongside wellbeing, not at the expense of wellbeing. Specifically, this includes interventions which promote experiential acceptance, and excludes interventions which promote experiential avoidance. With this framework, we hope to support practitioners, students, and educators by illustrating how different theories can and cannot be integrated in their own practice. In line with our expertise, examples are predominantly taken from esports literature. However, the model and philosophy presented is applicable to all high-performance domains. We end this article by proposing questions to develop performance psychology philosophy inside and outside of esports.
Purpose
Given the limited literature on depression as a contributing factor to compulsive social media use, the present research examines the role of perceived depressive mood (PDM) in developing compulsive social media use behavior. The authors also identify and hypothesize channels such as contingent self-esteem (CSE), social interaction anxiety (SIA) and fear of negative evaluation (FNE), which may explain how PDM affects compulsive social media use.
Design/methodology/approach
The research model was empirically tested with a survey of 367 Chinese university students using structural equation modeling by drawing on the escape and self-presentation lenses.
Findings
The findings indicate that PDM contributes to compulsive social media use behavior both directly and indirectly through CSE. Furthermore, the impact of CSE on compulsive social media use is mediated by the FNE, whereas SIA fails to mediate this effect.
Practical implications
The results can advance the authors’ knowledge of the role and process by which depressive mood impacts compulsive social media use. These findings may add insights into psychological treatment and help in, for example, developing counseling programs or coping strategies for depressed people to protect them from using social media excessively.
Originality/value
This research identifies the pathway mechanism between PDM and compulsive use of social media. It also increases the understanding of how CSE and social interaction deficiencies contribute to compulsive social media usage (CSMU).
Antecedentes
: en la actualidad, son escasas las intervenciones para el manejo de la regulación problemática de la ira y la inflexibilidad psicológica en adultos jóvenes afectados.
Objetivo
: evaluar la eficacia de una intervención breve, en formato grupal y virtual para la regulación problemática de la ira y la reducción de la inflexibilidad psicológica.
Método
: un grupo de 40 adultos jóvenes colombianos (40% hombres; 60% mujeres; M = 25.3 años; DE = 3.35) fueron asignados aleatoriamente a una de dos condiciones: intervención basada en la terapia de aceptación y compromiso (ACT) para regulación de la ira y la reducción de la inflexibilidad psicológica y lista de espera. Se evaluaron la evitación experiencial, la fusión cognitiva, la conexión con el momento presente, los valores y la percepción de efectos de la expresión problemática de la ira. Resultados: se encontraron diferencias significativas con tamaños de efecto grandes en las variables de evitación experiencial, defusión cognitiva, contacto con el momento presente y obstrucción en valores. Las variables de progreso en valores y percepción de efectos de la ira presentaron cambios en el grupo experimental, pero no en su comparación con el grupo control.
Conclusión
: los resultados aportaron evidencia sobre la eficacia de esta intervención, aunque se requieren más estudios que así lo confirmen.
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is marked by intense anxiety in social situations and negative cognitions. We developed the Social Anxiety‐Awareness and Acceptance Scale (SA‐AAS) to measure awareness and acceptance in anxiety‐provoking social situations and examined the relationship between awareness, acceptance, and SAD symptoms. Patients (N = 412) with SAD completed the SA‐AAS and a set of questionnaires that evaluated trait mindfulness, self‐focused attention, cost/probability bias, avoidance behavior, and social anxiety. An exploratory factor analysis revealed that the SA‐AAS has two factors: “awareness” and “acceptance.” Correlation analyses revealed that each factor had a significantly weak‐to‐moderate correlation with the total score for trait mindfulness and the observing, non‐reactivity, and describing factors. Partial correlation analyses demonstrated no significant correlations between awareness and cost/probability bias, avoidance behavior, and social anxiety. In contrast, there were significant negative correlations between acceptance and self‐focused attention, cost/probability bias, avoidance behavior, and social anxiety. A one‐way analysis of variance indicated that the low awareness and acceptance cluster, and the high awareness and low acceptance cluster had higher SAD symptom scores concerning cost/probability bias and social anxiety than the moderate and high awareness and acceptance clusters. The SA‐AAS has high reliability and validity, and acceptance of mindfulness was negatively related to SAD symptoms.
Background & Objective: This study aims at investigating the effectiveness of Exposure and Response/Ritual Prevention (ERP) treatment on depression symptoms and experiential avoidance in female patients suffering from Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Methods: The current research is considered an applied study with a quasi-experimental method of pre-post-test with a control group. For this study, 24 women were chosen via purposive sampling and subjected to two groups of paired and trial groups of 12. It noted that both groups received medications, while the experimental group also received Exposure and Response/Ritual Prevention (ERP); hence the control group was not subjected to any additional intervention other than its usual one of medications. Experiential avoidance and depression respectively measured by Acceptance and Action Questionnaire and Beck Depression Inventory and was later analyzed, using MANCOVA. Results: Our findings show no significant difference between the aggregate score in experiential avoidance in the experiment group (Exposure and Response/Ritual Prevention) and control group (medical treatment). According to the findings, it considered that encountering treatment method and Exposure and Response/Ritual Prevention (ERP) has no effect of experimental avoidance scores of the females who are affected with the obsessive-compulsive disorder. While revealing a significant discrepancy between pre-and post-test depression scores, it understood that Exposure and Response/Ritual Prevention (ERP) effected on reducing of the females who are suffering Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Conclusion: This paper aims to explore pre-post-test scores in experiential avoidance and depression in Obsessive-compulsive disorder patients after having the experience of Exposure and Response/Ritual Prevention. Our results revealed no decrease in experiential avoidance in female Obsessive-compulsive disorder patients under Exposure and Response/Ritual Prevention treatment or medication alike. In an attempt of explanation, one can claim more frequency of sessions with fewer intervals in between to possibly help bring relief regarding experiential avoidance in Obsessive-compulsive disorder patients. But on the same lines, the results report a decrease in depression symptoms in post-test in both Exposure and Response/Ritual Prevention and medication group which is, yet again, in concert with previous findings.
The Hispanic population is the largest minority group in the United States and frequently experiences racial discrimination and mental health difficulties. Prior work suggests that perceived racial discrimination is a significant risk factor for poorer mental health among Hispanic in the United States. However, little work has investigated how perceived racial discrimination relates to anxiety and depression among Hispanic adults. Thus, the current study evaluated the explanatory role of experiential avoidance in the relation between perceived racial discrimination and anxiety/depressive symptoms and disorders among Hispanic adults in primary care. Participants included 202 Spanish-speaking adults ( M age = 38.99, SD = 12.43, 86.1% female) attending a community-based Federally Qualified Health Center. Results were consistent with the hypothesis that perceived racial discrimination had a significant indirect effect on depression, social anxiety, and anxious arousal symptoms as well as the number of mood and anxiety disorders through experiential avoidance. These findings suggest future work should continue to explore experiential avoidance in the association between perceived racial discrimination and other psychiatric and medical problems among the Hispanic population.
Objectives: Aging is one of the most critical stages of human development that has its own characteristics and conditions. One of the most common issues in old age is the mental health whose achievement requires special attention from both health system policymakers and service providers to the elderly. Death anxiety is one of the most common mental health issues in old age, because this period is full of feelings of shortcomings and disabilities. Since death anxiety is a multidimensional factor, it is expected to affect many aspects of the elderly. The present study aims to review and analyze published studies in the field of death anxiety in the elderly in Iran.
Methods & Materials: This is a systematic review and meta-analysis conducted on the studies related to the death anxiety of the elderly in Iran published in Persian from 2011 to 2019. A search was conducted in national databases, including SID, IranDoc, MagIran, IDML, and CIVILICA using the keywords: Death anxiety, elderly, and older adult. Initial search yielded 61 articles. After screening, 33 studies that met the entry and exit criteria were selected for the final review. We used Stata v. 14 and SPSS v. 22 applications to perform meta-analysis.
Results: In the studies, 40.35% of the participants were older women and the rest were older men with a mean age of 67.80±6.44 years. The mean score of death anxiety was higher in men than in women, and the elderly living in nursing homes had the highest score (11.8). Studies were categorized into three sections: comparison (3 studies), intervention (11 studies), and factors affecting the death anxiety (18 studies). The results of meta-analysis showed no significant relationship between spiritual therapy and reduction of death anxiety in the elderly (P>0.05). In studies with spiritual and behavioral therapies, the heterogeneity was significant and, thus, a significant positive relationship was observed between the reduction of death anxiety and these treatments methods.
Conclusion: The death anxiety level of the elderly in Iran is low. Religious beliefs, hopes for the intercession of imams and religious leaders, and hopes for freedom from the hardships of worldly life seem to have contributed to low death anxiety in Iran. Different death anxiety scores have been reported for older men and women in Iran may be due to the effect of culture, religion, and traditions, the difference in the roles of men and women, and even the expression of fear and anxiety. Most of men have less tendency to express their emotions, including fear, while women are more likely to express their feelings. Behavioral and spiritual interventions lead to a decrease in the elderly’s death anxiety through affecting their finding meaning in life.
Background
Emotion regulation flexibility is a person's tendency to shift their use of emotion regulation strategies in response to contextual demands. A lack of flexibility is thought to underlie affective disorders, yet conceptualizations of “flexibility” vary widely, and few studies have empirically assessed flexibility. In this study, we outline methods for measuring emotion regulation flexibility and then examine evidence for inflexibility in people with a common affective disorder: social anxiety disorder (SAD).
Methods
Participants were community adults diagnosed with SAD and a psychologically healthycontrol group who completed a 14-day experience-sampling study. Participants recorded their most anxiety-provoking event each day, how they evaluated contextual demands (i.e., perceived controllability, emotional intensity) of these events, and their use of seven emotion regulation strategies to manage anxiety. Hypotheses and analyses were preregistered with the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/s7kqj/).
Results
Participants with SAD demonstrated some evidence of inflexibility. They used three disengagement strategies (rumination, thought suppression, expressive suppression) more often than controls and did so independently of contextual demands (specifically, perceived controllability). Nonetheless, participants with SAD largely demonstrated similar regulatory patterns as controls, most notably in their use of engagement strategies (acceptance, cognitive, reappraisal, problem-solving).
Limitations
We measured two of many possible contextual demands, did not compare to a mixed clinical group or other affective disorders (e.g., depression), and did not assess temporal sequences of strategy use.
Conclusions
People with SAD demonstrate some inflexibility in their use of disengagement regulation strategies.
Background & objectives: One of the important areas of health of the elderly persons is its psychological aspect that requires special attention and prevention of disorders such as anxiety in them. Death anxiety as an abnormal fear of his death undermines effective compatibility. This study aimed to investigate the role of cognitive fusion, locus of control and cognitive avoidance in the prediction of death anxiety in the elderly. Method: The conducting method was a descriptive and correlative study. The statistical population of this study included all the male elderly over-60 years old of Ardabil in 2016, which 108 persons of them were selected as the study sample using the convenience sampling. For data collection, the cognitive fusion scale (CFQ), locus of control scale (RLOC), cognitive avoidance scale (CAQ) and death anxiety scale (DAS) were used. The data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression tests in SPSS 21 statistical software. Findings: The study results showed a significant positive relationship between cognitive fusion and death anxiety (r=0.41, p<0.05) and a significant negative relationship between locus of control and death anxiety (r=-0.46, p<0.05). Additionally, a significant positive relationship existed between cognitive avoidance and death anxiety (r=0.42, p<0.05). Multiple regression analysis showed that cognitive fusion 0.31, locus of control-0.36 and cognitive avoidance 0.30 significantly predict death anxiety of the elderly persons (p<0.05). Conclusion: Thus, it can be concluded that cognitive fusion, locus of control and cognitive avoidance are considered the predicting variables related to death anxiety.
Aims: Diabetes is a disease that in case of coexisting with low self-care, its severity and complications may increase. The aim of the present study was to determine the effect of combined treatment package (Acceptance and commitment therapy-based healthy lifestyle) with mindfulness-based therapy on self-care and glycated hemoglobin (A1C) in patients with diabetes mellitus, type 2. Materials & Methods: The present research, which was conducted in 2017, is a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental study consisting of 2 intervention groups and 1 control group. Firstly, 45 women with diabetes mellitus, type 2 in Isfahan were chosen as the research sample and randomly divided into intervention and control groups. Self-care scale and glycated hemoglobin test were considered as the research instruments. The patients in combined therapy group were treated during 12 three-hour sessions and patients in mindfulness-based therapy group were treated during 10 two-hour sessions. Finally, the data were analyzed by the repeated measures ANOVA and Bonferroni post hoc test, using SPSS 21 software. Findings: There was a significant difference between intervention and control groups with respect to self-care. There was a significant difference between ACT-based healthy lifestyle group with mindfulness-based therapy and control group, and there was a significant difference between the mindfulness-based therapy and control group. In terms of A1C, there was a significant difference between intervention and control groups. ACT-based healthy lifestyle group had a significant difference with mindfulness-based therapy group and control group, but there was no significant difference between mindfulness-based therapy and control group. Conclusion: ACT-based healthy lifestyle can improve the self-care and decrease glycated hemoglobin in patients with diabetes mellitus, type 2 and it is more effective than the mindfulness-based therapy (standard therapy).
Background & objectives: One of the important areas of health of the elderly persons is its psychological aspect that requires special attention and prevention of disorders such as anxiety in them. Death anxiety as an abnormal fear of his death undermines effective compatibility. This study aimed to investigate the role of cognitive fusion, locus of control and cognitive avoidance in the prediction of death anxiety in the elderly. Method: The conducting method was a descriptive and correlative study. The statistical population of this study included all the male elderly over-60 years old of Ardabil in 2016, which 108 persons of them were selected as the study sample using the convenience sampling. For data collection, the cognitive fusion scale (CFQ), locus of control scale (RLOC), cognitive avoidance scale (CAQ) and death anxiety scale (DAS) were used. The data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression tests in SPSS 21 statistical software. Findings: The study results showed a significant positive relationship between cognitive fusion and death anxiety (r=0.41, p<0.05) and a significant negative relationship between locus of control and death anxiety (r=-0.46, p<0.05). Additionally, a significant positive relationship existed between cognitive avoidance and death anxiety (r=0.42, p<0.05). Multiple regression analysis showed that cognitive fusion 0.31, locus of control-0.36 and cognitive avoidance 0.30 significantly predict death anxiety of the elderly persons (p<0.05). Conclusion: Thus, it can be concluded that cognitive fusion, locus of control and cognitive avoidance are considered the predicting variables related to death anxiety.
A large body of research has linked relational aggression (RA) to indices of psychosocial and academic maladjustment. Recent work suggests that urban, minority adolescent girls who experience peer aggression are at particularly high risk for negative outcomes, including internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, though this population has been underrepresented in the literature. Despite the high prevalence of RA, only a small portion of adolescents experience chronic victimization and/or develop serious, lasting effects. Identifying factors which confer vulnerability in the context of RA may have important implications for intervention and prevention. The present study theorized that heavy reliance on experiential avoidance (EA) would be associated with history of RA victimization, and would predict internalizing problems. We also hypothesized that self-reported EA would be positively related to sadness in adolescents who experienced negative mood following an in vivo laboratory-based social exclusion experience. Participants included 58 female adolescents (aged 11 to 14 years) recruited from urban schools and community centers. Results supported our hypotheses. EA was associated with history of RA victimization, and predicted internalizing and externalizing symptoms, even when accounting for history of RA victimization. EA was also a significant predictor of more negative mood following a social exclusion experience, even when accounting for baseline mood. Implications and recommendations for future research and intervention are discussed.
Evaluation of psychometric and factor structural properties of Experiential Avoidance multidimensional questionnaire (short form)
Experiential avoidance is the attempt to change the shape, frequency, and duration of events that are perceived as negative and retreat from situations that provoke such occurrences. Experiential avoidance is contributory in the development, persistence and exacerbation of many of psychological disorders and problems in interpersonal relationships. The aim of this study is to investigate the validity and reliability of the short form of Experiential Avoidance multidimensional questionnaire among the Iranian university students. For this purpose, 335 students were selected through availability sampling method and evaluated by multidimensional questionnaires of Experiential Avoidance, Acceptance & Act, and the World Health Organization’s Quality of Life. The results of exploratory factor analysis showed that the questionnaire contains six factors including: cognitive avoidance, emotional avoidance, behavioral avoidance, mental confusion aversion, procrastination, and psychological pressure tolerance. Positive correlation between psychological pressure tolerance and physical health, mental health, and acceptance demonstrate the convergent validity of the questionnaire. The results, also, indicated desirable internal consistency of the questionnaire among the Iranian students; and that it can be used to predict mental health and identify individuals prone to various physical and psychological disorders.
key words:
experiential avoidance, validity, reliability
Abstract
Objectives: The aim of current study was to investigate two factors of rumination and avoidance in healthy and with depression and social anxiety disorder individuals. Method: Thirty patients with unipolar mood disorder, 30 patients with social anxiety disorder and 120 nonclinical samples were selected by accessible sampling method. Data gathering was by Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), Response Styles Questionnaire (RSQ), Cognitive Behavioral Avoidance Scale (CBAS) and Post Event Processing Questionnaire (PEPQ). In addition to descriptive statistics methods, discriminant function analysis was used to reveal major differences among the groups. Results: The findings showed significant difference between individuals with depression and with social anxiety groups in cognitive nonsocial avoidance (p<0.001), behavioral nonsocial avoidance (p<0.001) and rumination (p<0.001), and no significant difference for post event processing, social avoidance and distraction. The cognitive nonsocial avoidance and rumination variables were the best predictors for distinguishing social anxiety group from depressed group. Conclusion: The current study showed some overlap in cognitive psychopathology of unipolar disorders and social anxiety. It seems that rumination, post event processing and avoidance are on a continuum from normal to abnormal. However, rumination and cognitive nonsocial avoidance were distinctive features of depression. This study provided evidence to support both dimensional and categorical approaches.
A theory of ironic processes of mental control is proposed to account for the intentional and counterintentional effects that result from efforts at self-control of mental states. The theory holds that an attempt to control the mind introduces 2 processes: (a) an operating process that promotes the intended change by searching for mental contents consistent with the intended state and (b) a monitoring process that tests whether the operating process is needed by searching for mental contents inconsistent with the intended state. The operating process requires greater cognitive capacity and normally has more pronounced cognitive effects than the monitoring process, and the 2 working together thus promote whatever degree of mental control is enjoyed. Under conditions that reduce capacity, however, the monitoring process may supersede the operating process and thus enhance the person's sensitivity to mental contents that are the ironic opposite of those that are intended.
The present study describes the development of a short, general measure of experiential avoidance, based on a specific theoretical approach to this process. A theoretically driven iterative exploratory analysis using structural equation modeling on data from a clinical sample yielded a single factor comprising 9 items, A fully confirmatory factor analysis upheld this same 9-item factor in an independent clinical sample. The operational characteristics of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAO) were then examined in 8 additional samples. All totaled, over 2,400
The present study describes the development of a short, general measure of experiential avoidance, based on a specific theoretical approach to this process. A theoretically driven iterative exploratory analysis using structural equation modeling on data from a clinical sample yielded a single factor comprising 9 items. A fully confirmatory factor analysis upheld this same 9-item factor in an independent clinical sample. The operational characteristics of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ) were then examined in 8 additional samples. All totaled, over 2,400 participants were studied. As expected, higher levels of experiential avoidance were associated with higher levels of general psychopathology, depression, anxiety, a variety of specific fears, trauma, and a lower quality of life. The AAQ related to more specific measures of avoidant coping and to self-deceptive positivity, but the relation to psychopathology could not be fully accounted for by these alternative measures. The data provide some initial support for the model of experiential avoidance based on Relational Frame Theory that is incorporated into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and provides researchers with a preliminary measure for use in population-based studies on experiential avoidance.
Syndromal classification is a well-developed diagnostic system but has failed to deliver on its promise of the identification of functional pathological processes. Functional analysis is tightly connected to treatment but has failed to develop testable, replicable classification systems. Functional diagnostic dimensions are suggested as a way to develop the functional classification approach, and experiential avoidance is described as 1 such dimension. A wide range of research is reviewed showing that many forms of psychopathology can be conceptualized as unhealthy efforts to escape and avoid emotions, thoughts, memories, and other private experiences. It is argued that experiential avoidance, as a functional diagnostic dimension, has the potential to integrate the efforts and findings of researchers from a wide variety of theoretical paradigms, research interests, and clinical domains and to lead to testable new approaches to the analysis and treatment of behavioral disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The psychometric adequacy of the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS; R. P. Mattick & J. C. Clark, 1989), a measure of social interaction anxiety, and the Social Phobia Scale (SPS; R. P. Mattick & J. C. Clark, 1989), a measure of anxiety while being observed by others, was evaluated in anxious patients and normal controls. Social phobia patients scored higher on both scales and were more likely to be identified as having social phobia than other anxious patients (except for agoraphobic patients on the SPS) or controls. Clinician-rated severity of social phobia was moderately related to SIAS and SPS scores. Additional diagnoses of mood or panic disorder did not affect SIAS or SPS scores among social phobia patients, but an additional diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder was associated with SIAS scores. Number of reported feared social interaction situations was more highly correlated with scores on the SIAS, whereas number of reported feared performance situations was more highly correlated with scores on the SPS. These scales appear to be useful in screening, designing individualized treatments, and evaluating the outcomes of treatments for social phobia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The criterion validity of the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; A. T. Beck, R. A. Steer, & G. K. Brown, 1996) was investigated by pairing blind BDI-II administrations with the
major depressive episode portion of the Structured Clinical Interview for
DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I; M. B. First, R. L. Spitzer, M. Gibbon, & J. B. W. Williams, 1997) in a sample of 137 students receiving treatment at a university counseling center. Student BDI-II scores correlated strongly (
r=.83) with their number of SCID-I depressed mood symptoms. A BDI-II cut score of 16 yielded a sensitivity rate of 84% and a false-positive rate of 18% in identifying depressed mood. Receiver operating characteristic analyses were used to produce cut scores for determining severity of depressed mood. In a second study, a sample of 46 student clients were administered the BDI-II twice, yielding test-retest reliability of .96. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
While the emotion of anger has become an increasingly important part of clinical assessment, the theoretical and psychometric adequacy of the instruments used to assess anger and hostility have long been questioned. In the present review, we first provide definitions of anger and hostility in order to provide a theoretical context from which to evaluate the scope of current measures of these constructs. Second, we review the major self-report scales used to assess anger and hostility in light of these definitions and provide a detailed evaluation of psychometric evidence concerning their reliability and validity. Finally, we offer specific recommendations concerning how anger and hostility assessment instruments can be improved and expanded. In particular, we note the need for (a) an expansion of anger assessment methods beyond traditional endorsement approaches, (b) scales to assess specific domains of anger experience, (c) scales that assess unique content domains of anger experience and expressions, such as spouse-specific or driving-related anger scales, and (d) scales that assess the clinical aspects of the anger construct.
Despite the demonstrated efficacy of cognitive-behavior therapy for Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), many individuals do not respond to treatment or demonstrate residual symptoms and impairment after treatment. Preliminary evidence indicates that incorporating mindfulness and acceptance techniques within traditional behavior therapy, through psychotherapy programs such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), can be helpful for a variety of disorders. Only one study to date has been conducted on ACT for public speaking anxiety in a college sample, which showed promising results. We examined the efficacy of ACT in individuals diagnosed with SAD in a pilot study. Participants received 12 weekly individual sessions of ACT for SAD. The treatment incorporated mindfulness and acceptance techniques within a standard exposure-based intervention protocol for SAD. Multi-modal assessments were conducted using standardized measures at pre-treatment, mid-treatment, and post-treatment. Self-reported baseline assessments were also included to control for threats to internal validity; results showed no change in symptoms from baseline to pre-treatment. Results showed significant pre- to post-treatment improvement in self-reported and clinician-rated social anxiety symptoms and observer-rated social skills, as well as significant improvement on ACT-specific measures of willingness, experiential avoidance, and valued action. Large effect size gains were found in social anxiety symptoms and quality of life, and were comparable to those of other studies examining the efficacy of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for SAD. Furthermore, 37.5% of participants met criteria for reliable and clinically significant change, and change in quality of life and experiential avoidance were significantly associated with treatment outcome. Results from the present study suggest the potential efficacy of ACT for SAD and highlight the need for future research utilizing larger samples and directly comparing ACT to CBT.
C. S. Carver and E. Harmon-Jones (2009) have presented considerable evidence to support their argument that "anger relates to an appetitive or approach motivational system, whereas anxiety relates to an aversive or avoidance motivational system" (p. 183). However, they have failed to take sufficient account of the extensive psychometric data indicating that anger is strongly related to anxiety (and other negative affects) and more weakly associated with the positive affects. Considering all of the available evidence, the most accurate conclusion is that anger shows both approach and avoidance properties. Moreover, viewed in the context of the hierarchical structure of affect, some evidence suggests that the nonspecific component of anger (i.e., its shared variance with the other negative affects) is primarily related to the aversive or avoidance motivational system, whereas its specific component (i.e., its unique qualities that distinguish it from other negative affects) has a stronger link to the appetitive or approach system. The author concludes by considering the broader implications of these data for affective structure.
The authors review a range of evidence concerning the motivational underpinnings of anger as an affect, with particular reference to the relationship between anger and anxiety or fear. The evidence supports the view that anger relates to an appetitive or approach motivational system, whereas anxiety relates to an aversive or avoidance motivational system. This evidence appears to have 2 implications. One implication concerns the nature of anterior cortical asymmetry effects. The evidence suggests that such asymmetry reflects direction of motivational engagement (approach vs. withdrawal) rather than affective valence. The other implication concerns the idea that affects form a purely positive dimension and a purely negative dimension, which reflect the operation of appetitive and aversive motivational systems, respectively. The evidence reviewed does not support that view. The evidence is, however, consistent with a discrete-emotions view (which does not rely on dimensionality) and with an alternative dimensional approach.
Working largely independently, numerous investigators have explored the role of self-focused attention in various clinical disorders. This article reviews research examining increased self-focused attention in these disorders. Results indicate that regardless of the particular disorder under investigation, a heightened degree of self-focused attention is found. Hence, as ordinarily conceptualized, self-focused attention has little discriminatory power among different psychological disorders. Using information processing constructs, a somewhat different model of self-focused attention is proposed, and it is suggested that certain deviations in this process constitute a psychopathological kind of attention. A meta-construct model of descriptive psychopathology is then outlined to examine how certain aspects of attention can be considered specific to certain disorders and others common to different disorders.
Noting that a wide variety of unpleasant feelings, including sadness and depression, apparently can give rise to anger and aggression, I propose a cognitive-neoassociationistic model to account for the effects of negative affect on the development of angry feelings and the display of emotional aggression. Negative affect tends to activate ideas, memories, and expressive-motor reactions associated with anger and aggression as well as rudimentary angry feelings. Subsequent thought involving attributions, appraisals, and schematic conceptions can then intensify, suppress, enrich, or differentiate the initial reactions. Bodily reactions as well as emotion-relevant thoughts can activate the other components of the particular emotion network to which they are linked. Research findings consistent with the model are summarized. Experimental findings are also reported indicating that attention to one's negative feelings can lead to a regulation of the overt effects of the negative affect, I argue that the model can integrate the core aspect of the James-Lange theory with the newer cognitive theories of emotion.
Previous research suggests that anger has important social and health consequences, particularly cardiovascular health. The pathogenic aspects of anger have not been identified, however, in part because of a reliance on unidimensional measures of anger. The present article describes psychometric data for an inventory that is sensitive to the multidimensional nature of the anger construct. It was hypothesized that the newly developed Multidimensional Anger Inventory (MAI) would include scales reflective of the following dimensions of anger: frequency, duration, magnitude, mode of expression, hostile outlook, and range of anger-eliciting situations. The mode of expression dimension was expected to contain separate anger-in, anger-out, guilt, brood, and anger-discuss measures. The inventory was administered to two populations: male and female college students and male factory workers. Factor analyses of the MAI within the two samples showed that the frequency, duration, and magnitude dimensions clustered together to form an anger-arousal factor that accounted for 64% and 71% of the variance in the two samples, respectively. The range of anger-eliciting situations and hostile outlook emerged as separate dimensions, as hypothesized. Mode of anger expression was best described by two dimensions labeled anger-in and anger-out. Psychometric analyses of the scale showed that it possessed adequate test-retest reliability (r = 0.75) and high internal consistency (alpha = .84 and .89 for the two samples). The validity of the scale was supported by the expected pattern of relations with other inventories designed to assess anger or hostility. Comparisons of MAI scores between (college versus factory) and within (male versus female) populations were made.
This article argues that the concept of anger is not well characterized from the classical perspective. Instead, its membership is graded, its borders are fuzzy, and its subcategories fail to form a true class-inclusion hierarchy. Ss rated potential anger subcategories (fury, jealousy, annoyance, etc.) and remembered instances of their own anger as varying in degree of membership in anger. Degree of membership (prototypicality) predicted each subcategory's availability from memory given the category name, reaction time to verify its status as a subcategory, and its substitutability within naturally generated sentences about anger. Two predictions of a true class-inclusion hierarchy failed: that Ss would agree in adjudicating the membership of potential subcategories of anger and that all instances of a subcategory of anger would also be instances of anger. As an alternative to the classical view, emotion concepts are hypothesized to vary in their degree of breadth and overlap and to be mentally represented as scripts that allow different instantiations in different contexts.
The authors review evidence that self-control may consume a limited resource. Exerting self-control may consume self-control strength, reducing the amount of strength available for subsequent self-control efforts. Coping with stress, regulating negative affect, and resisting temptations require self-control, and after such self-control efforts, subsequent attempts at self-control are more likely to fail. Continuous self-control efforts, such as vigilance, also degrade over time. These decrements in self-control are probably not due to negative moods or learned helplessness produced by the initial self-control attempt. These decrements appear to be specific to behaviors that involve self-control; behaviors that do not require self-control neither consume nor require self-control strength. It is concluded that the executive component of the self--in particular, inhibition--relies on a limited, consumable resource.
Five studies tested two general hypotheses: Individuals differ in their use of emotion regulation strategies such as reappraisal and suppression, and these individual differences have implications for affect, well-being, and social relationships. Study 1 presents new measures of the habitual use of reappraisal and suppression. Study 2 examines convergent and discriminant validity. Study 3 shows that reappraisers experience and express greater positive emotion and lesser negative emotion, whereas suppressors experience and express lesser positive emotion, yet experience greater negative emotion. Study 4 indicates that using reappraisal is associated with better interpersonal functioning, whereas using suppression is associated with worse interpersonal functioning. Study 5 shows that using reappraisal is related positively to well-being, whereas using suppression is related negatively.
The present article presents and reviews the model of psychopathology and treatment underlying Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). ACT is unusual in that it is linked to a comprehensive active basic research program on the nature of human language and cognition (Relational Frame Theory), echoing back to an earlier era of behavior therapy in which clinical treatments were consciously based on basic behavioral principles. The evidence from correlational, component, process of change, and outcome comparisons relevant to the model are broadly supportive, but the literature is not mature and many questions have not yet been examined. What evidence is available suggests that ACT works through different processes than active treatment comparisons, including traditional Cognitive-Behavior Therapy (CBT). There are not enough well-controlled studies to conclude that ACT is generally more effective than other active treatments across the range of problems examined, but so far the data are promising.
This article reviews the literature on the relationship between interpersonal rejection and aggression. Four bodies of research are summarized: laboratory experiments that manipulate rejection, rejection among adults in everyday life, rejection in childhood, and individual differences that may moderate the relationship. The theoretical mechanisms behind the effect are then explored. Possible explanations for why rejection leads to anger and aggression include: rejection as a source of pain, rejection as a source of frustration, rejection as a threat to self-esteem, mood improvement following aggression, aggression as social influence, aggression as a means of reestablishing control, retribution, disinhibition, and loss of self-control.
The authors experimentally examined the effects of anger suppression on pain perception. On the basis of ironic process theory, they proposed that efforts to suppress experiential or expressive components of anger may paradoxically enhance cognitive accessibility of anger-related thoughts and feelings, thereby contaminating perception of succeeding pain in an anger-congruent manner. Participants were randomly assigned to nonsuppression or experiential or expressive suppression conditions during mental arithmetic with or without harassment. A cold-pressor task followed. Results revealed that participants instructed to suppress experiential or expressive components of emotion during harassment not only reported the greatest pain levels, but also rated the anger-specific dimensions of pain uniquely strong. Results suggest that attempts to suppress anger may amplify pain sensitivity by ironically augmenting perception of the irritating and frustrating qualities of pain.
Despite the demonstrated efficacy of cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) for social anxiety disorder (SAD), many individuals do not respond to treatment or demonstrate residual symptoms and impairment posttreatment. Preliminary evidence indicates that acceptance-based approaches (e.g., acceptance and commitment therapy; ACT) can be helpful for a variety of disorders and emphasize exposure-based strategies and processes. Nineteen individuals diagnosed with SAD participated in a 12-week program integrating exposure therapy and ACT. Results revealed no changes across a 4-week baseline control period. From pretreatment to follow-up, significant improvements occurred in social anxiety symptoms and quality of life, yielding large effect size gains. Significant changes also were found in ACT-consistent process measures, and earlier changes in experiential avoidance predicted later changes in symptom severity. Results suggest the acceptability and potential efficacy of ACT for SAD and highlight the need for future research examining both the efficacy and mechanisms of change of acceptance-based programs for SAD.
Using clinical data and a variety of case studies, this title argues for a new diagnostic classification, Anger Regulation and Expression Disorder, that will help bring about clinical improvements and increased scientific understanding of anger. After situating anger in both historical and emotional contexts, it reports research that supports the existence of several subtypes of the disorder and review treatment outcome studies and new interventions to improve treatment. This title fully explores anger as a clinical phenomenon and provides a reliable set of assessment criteria, it represents a major step toward establishing the clear definitions and scientific basis necessary for assessing, diagnosing, and treating anger disorders.
Being preoccupied with the pursuit of money, wealth, and material possessions arguably fails as a strategy to increase pleasure and meaning in life. However, little is known about the mechanisms that explain the inverse relation between materialism and well-being. The current study tested the hypothesis that experiential avoidance mediates associations between materialistic values and diminished emotional well-being, meaning in life, self-determination, and gratitude. Results indicated that people with stronger materialistic values reported more negative emotions and less relatedness, autonomy, competence, gratitude, and meaning in life. As expected, experiential avoidance fully mediated associations between materialistic values and each dimension of well-being. Emotional disturbances such as social anxiety and depressive symptoms failed to account for these findings after accounting for shared variance with experiential avoidance. The results are discussed in the context of alternative, more fulfilling routes to well-being.
Social phobia has become a focus of increased research since its inclusion in DSM-III. However, assessment of social phobia has remained an underdeveloped area, especially self-report assessment. Clinical researchers have relied on measures that were developed on college populations, and these measures may not provide sufficient coverage of the range of situations feared by social phobic individuals. There is a need for additional instruments that consider differences in the types of situations (social interaction vs. situations involving observation by others) that may be feared by social phobics and between subgroups of social phobic patients. This study provides validational data on two instruments developed by Mattick and Clarke (1989): the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS), a measure of anxiety in social interactional situations, and the Social Phobia Scale (SPS), a measure of anxiety in situations involving observation by others. These data support the use of the SIAS and SPS in the assessment of individuals with social phobia.
The future of personality psychology may be viewed from three different vantage points, each representing a relatively distinct level or domain within which human individuality may be described and explained. From the first vantage point ofdispositional traits,the significant conceptual and empirical advances of the 1980s should lead to continued consolidation of the trait concept in the years to come and the vigorous expansion of the application of trait schemes, especially the Big Five, to a wide range of fields and phenomena. It is possible, however, to envision a less optimistic alternative future for the trait concept, should trait researchers fall prey to the kind of parochialism that has sometimes characterized personality research in years past. Beyond traits,personal concernsencompass many motivational, developmental, and strategic constructs of personality that are contextualized in time, place, and/or social role. The recent upsurge of interest in such constructs as personal strivings, life tasks, and so on suggests that the study of human individuality from this second vantage point should witness considerable proliferation in construct development during the next few years as well as integrative attempts to map the geography of this vast and variegated personality domain. The third vantage point is that of identity as alife story,a perspective articulated in a number of relatively new personality theories. According to this perspective, most adults living in modern societies seek to provide their lives with unity and purpose by constructing internalized and evolving life narratives complete with settings, scenes, characters, plots, and themes. Personality psychologists have just begun to consider individuality from this third vantage point. It is hoped that future years will witness a significant research effort to collect, interpret, categorize, and analyze life stories and to explore their structure, function, and development in order to better understand their role and their position within the complexity of personality.
Conventional research programs adopt efficient cause as a metaphor for how mental events affect behavior. Such theory-constitutive metaphors usefully restrict the pur-view of research programs, to define the space of possibilities. However, conventional research programs have not yet offered a plausible account of how intentional con-tents control action, and such an account may be beyond the range of its theoretical possibilities. Circular causality supplies a more inclusive metaphor for how mental events might control behavior. Circular causality perpetuates dynamic structures in time. Mental contents are seen as emergent dynamic constraints perpetuated in time and vertically coupled across their multiple timescales. Intentional contents are ac-commodated as extraordinary boundary conditions (constraints) that evolve on timescales longer than those of motor coordination (Kugler & Turvey, 1987). Inten-tional contents, on their longer timescales, are thus available to control embodied processes on shorter timescales. One key assumption—that constraints are vertically coupled in time—is motivated empirically by correlated noise, long-range correla-tions in the background variability of measured laboratory performances. "The classification of behavior in categories, the limits of which are rigidly fixed, together with the adoption of a specific terminology, frequently serves to check sci-entific advance. … The terms 'reflex,' 'involuntary,' 'voluntary' and 'automatic' are more than classificatory designations; they have come to carry a burden of im-plications, philosophical, physiological and psychological. … It is essential that they be used with caution, and that the hypothetical implications which they have acquired during the 17th and 18th centuries be regarded as provisional only" (Fearing, 1930/1970, p. 253).
From an emotion regulation framework, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) can be conceptualized as a syndrome involving heightened intensity of subjective emotional experience, poor understanding of emotion, negative reactivity to emotional experience, and the use of maladaptive emotion management strategies (including over-reliance on cognitive control strategies such as worry). The current study sought to replicate previous findings of emotion dysregulation among individuals with GAD and delineate which aspects of emotion dysregulation are specific to GAD or common to GAD and another mental disorder (social anxiety disorder). Individuals with GAD reported greater emotion intensity and fear of the experience of depression than persons with social anxiety disorder and nonanxious control participants. Individuals with social anxiety disorder indicated being less expressive of positive emotions, paying less attention to their emotions, and having more difficulty describing their emotions than either persons with GAD or controls. Measures of emotion differentiated GAD, social anxiety disorder, and normal control groups with good accuracy in a discriminant function analysis. Findings are discussed in light of theoretical and treatment implications for both disorders.
Few studies have been conducted on psychological disorders other than post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in war survivors. The aim of this study was to examine PTSD, social anxiety disorder (SAD), and major depressive disorder (MDD) and their associations with distress and quality of life in 174 Albanian civilian survivors of the Kosovo War. This included testing of conceptual models suggesting that experiential avoidance might influence associations between anxiety and mood disorders with psychological functioning. Each of the three psychiatric disorders was associated with greater experiential avoidance and psychological distress, and lower quality of life. Being a refugee was associated with a higher likelihood of having SAD and MDD. We found evidence for experiential avoidance as a partial mediator of the respective effects of SAD and PTSD on quality of life; experiential avoidance did not mediate the effects of disorders on global distress. We also found support for a moderation model showing that only war survivors without SAD and low experiential avoidance reported elevated quality of life; people with either SAD or excessive reliance on experiential avoidance reported compromised, low quality of life. This is the third independent study, each using a different methodology, to find empirical support for this moderation model [Kashdan, T. B., & Breen, W. E. (2008). Social anxiety and positive emotions: a prospective examination of a self-regulatory model with tendencies to suppress or express emotions as a moderating variable. Behavior Therapy, 39, 1-12; Kashdan, T. B., & Steger, M. F. (2006). Expanding the topography of social anxiety: an experience sampling assessment of positive emotions and events, and emotion suppression. Psychological Science, 17, 120-128]. Overall, we provided initial evidence for the importance of addressing PTSD, SAD, MDD, and experiential avoidance in primarily civilian war survivors.
Selected sociodemographic and clinical features of social phobia were assessed in four US communities among more than 13,000 adults from the Epidemiologic Catchment Area study. Rates of social phobia were highest among women and persons who were younger (age, 18 to 29 years), less educated, single, and of lower socioeconomic class. Mean age at onset was 15.5 years, and first onsets after the age of 25 years were uncommon. Lifetime major comorbid disorders were present in 69% of subjects with social phobia and usually had onset after social phobia. When compared with persons with no psychiatric disorder, uncomplicated social phobia was associated with increased rates of suicidal ideation, financial dependency, and having sought medical treatment, but was not associated with higher rates of having made a suicide attempt or having sought treatment from a mental health professional. An increase in suicide attempts was found among subjects with social phobia overall, but this increase was mainly attributable to comorbid cases. Social phobia, in the absence of comorbidity, was associated with distress and impairment, yet was rarely treated by mental health professionals. The findings are compared and contrasted with prior reports from clinical samples.
Examines the Dollard et al. (1939) frustration-aggression hypothesis. The original formulation's main proposition is limited to interference with an expected attainment of a desired goal on hostile (emotional) aggression. Although some studies have yielded negative results, others support the core proposition. Frustrations can create aggressive inclinations even when they are not arbitrary or aimed at the subject personally. Interpretations and attributions can be understood partly in terms of the original analysis but they can also influence the unpleasantness of the thwarting. A proposed revision of the 1939 model holds that frustrations generate aggressive inclinations to the degree that they arouse negative affect. Evidence regarding the aggressive consequences of aversive events is reviewed, and Berkowitz's cognitive-neoassociationistic model is summarized.
A theory of ironic processes of mental control is proposed to account for the intentional and counterintentional effects that result from efforts at self-control of mental states. The theory holds that an attempt to control the mind introduces 2 processes: (a) an operating process that promotes the intended change by searching for mental contents consistent with the intended state and (b) a monitoring process that tests whether the operating process is needed by searching for mental contents inconsistent with the intended state. The operating process requires greater cognitive capacity and normally has more pronounced cognitive effects than the monitoring process, and the 2 working together thus promote whatever degree of mental control is enjoyed. Under conditions that reduce capacity, however, the monitoring process may supersede the operating process and thus enhance the person's sensitivity to mental contents that are the ironic opposite of those that are intended.
The current paper presents a model of the experience of anxiety in social/evaluative situations in people with social phobia. The model describes the manner in which people with social phobia perceive and process information related to potential evaluation and the way in which these processes differ between people high and low in social anxiety. It is argued that distortions and biases in the processing of social/evaluative information lead to heightened anxiety in social situations and, in turn, help to maintain social phobia. Potential etiological factors as well as treatment implications are also discussed.
The development and validation of the Social Phobia Scale (SPS) and the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) two companion measures for assessing social phobia fears is described. The SPS assesses fear of being scrutinised during routine activities (eating, drinking, writing, etc.), while the SIAS assesses fear of more general social interaction, the scales corresponding to the DSM-III-R descriptions of Social Phobia--Circumscribed and Generalised types, respectively. Both scales were shown to possess high levels of internal consistency and test-retest reliability. They discriminated between social phobia, agoraphobia and simple phobia samples, and between social phobia and normal samples. The scales correlated well with established measures of social anxiety, but were found to have low or non-significant (partial) correlations with established measures of depression, state and trait anxiety, locus of control, and social desirability. The scales were found to change with treatment and to remain stable in the face of no-treatment. It appears that these scales are valid, useful, and easily scored measures for clinical and research applications, and that they represent an improvement over existing measures of social phobia.
This study examined the relationships between experiential avoidance in general (and thought suppression in particular), posttraumatic stress symptom severity, and symptoms of depression, anxiety, and somatization among a sample of individuals exposed to multiple potentially traumatic events. Although experiential avoidance was not associated with severity of posttraumatic stress symptoms beyond their shared relationship with general psychiatric symptom severity, it was associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and somatization when controlling for posttraumatic stress symptom severity. Thought suppression, on the other hand, was associated with severity of posttraumatic stress symptoms when controlling for their shared relationship with general psychiatric symptom severity. No significant relationships were found between thought suppression and the presence of depression, anxiety, and somatization symptoms when controlling for posttraumatic stress symptom severity. Results suggest the importance of separately examining the influence of different forms of experiential avoidance on posttraumatic psychopathology.