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Positive schizotypy has been employed as a unitary construct in previous experimental research despite the phenomenological heterogeneity of the schizotypal experiences that it describes. In the present paper, we report two psychometric studies on the Unusual Experiences (UE) scale, a widely employed measure of positive schizotypy from the Oxford –Liverpool Inventory for Feeling and Experiences (O-LIFE; Mason, Claridge, & Jackson, 1995). Study 1 (N = 829) explored the factor structure of UE and model fit was assessed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). Study 2 (N = 108) evaluated the validity of the factors by employing well-established measures of schizotypy related to positive symptomatology. The results supported a theoretically meaningful 3-factor solution: UE1 Unusual perceptions, UE2 Unusual salience/reality monitoring, and UE3 Unusual beliefs. The new subscales had adequate psychometric properties. We propose that the new subscales have the potential of improving research cohesion, motivating further research and enhancing understanding of experimental correlates of positive schizotypy.

This chapter discusses the effects of mood state on cognitive processes such as perception, attention, interpretation, learning, memory, judgement, decision-making, and reasoning. The effects of emotion on long-term memory depend on several brain regions. However, the brain area most involved is the amygdala. The amygdala is buried in the front part of the temporal lobe and is associated with several emotions. Shiota et al. made use of behavioural and neuroscience evidence to identify nine different positive emotions: pride, sexual desire, nurturant love, contentment, awe, amusement, attachment love, gratitude, and liking/pleasure. In spite of such evidence that there are several positive emotions, there is a puzzling difference between research on negative and on positive affect. Current emotions directly influence the evaluation of the outcomes (e.g. whether heuristic or analytic process is used; which motivational goals are active). They also indirectly influence decision-making by changing the predicted emotional reactions to different potential decision choices.

Hans Eysenck made outstanding contributions to the description of human personality with his identification of three orthogonal personality dimensions although his approach was less exhaustive than that of subsequent researchers. He also proposed an ambitious agenda for developing comprehensive theoretical explanations based on the experimental approach and the biological underpinnings of major personality dimensions. Subsequent theories have followed his blueprint. Hans Eysenck's higher-level theoretical assumptions have stood the test of time better than his lower-level ones. However, a general limitation was his de-emphasis of cognitive processes and structures. He was less successful at implementation and interpretation than theory generation. This occurred in part because of his preference for a lawyer-like approach to research rather than a more scientific and objective one.

The two most prominent individual differences researchers of the twentieth century were Hans J. Eysenck and Raymond B. Cattell. Both were giants of scientific psychology, each publishing scores of books and hundreds of empirical peer-reviewed journal articles. Influenced by Hebb's distinction between physiological (Intelligence A) and experiential (Intelligence B), Eysenck focused on discovering the underlying biological substrata of intelligence. Analogously, Cattell proposed the Gf–Gc theory which distinguishes between fluid and crystallised intelligence. Cattell's Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT), a measure primarily of fluid intelligence, was constructed specifically to minimise differences in test bias in IQ scores between different ethnic/racial groups. Within the personality realm, Eysenck adopted a pragmatic three-factor model as measured via the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R) and its variants. In contrast, Cattell employed a lexical approach that resulted in a large number of primary and secondary normal and abnormal personality trait dimensions, measured via the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF), and the corresponding Clinical Analysis Questionnaire (CAQ), respectively. Recent molecular genetics findings provide empirical confirmation of Eysenck and Cattell's positions on the biological underpinnings of personality and ability traits, allowing an improved understanding of the causes of individual differences.

Introduction\ud \ud Anxiety is known to impair attentional control particularly when Task demands are high. Neuroimaging studies generally support these behavioral findings, reporting that anxiety is associated with increased (inefficient) activity in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) during attentional control Tasks. However, less is known about the relationship between worry (part of the cognitive dimension of trait anxiety) and DLPFC/ACC function and connectivity during attentional control. In the present study, we sought to clarify this relationship.\ud \ud Methods\ud \ud Forty‐one participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during a composite Faces and Scenes Task with high and low emotional interference conditions. Individual worry levels were assessed using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire.\ud \ud Results\ud \ud During high but not low emotional interference, worry was associated with increased activity in ACC, DLPFC, insula, and inferior parietal cortex. During high emotional interference, worry was also associated with reduced functional connectivity between ACC and DLPFC. Trait anxiety was not associated with changes in DLPFC/ACC activity or connectivity during either Task condition.\ud \ud Conclusions\ud \ud The results are consistent with cognitive models that propose worry competes for limited processing resources resulting in inefficient DLPFC and ACC activity when Tasks demands are high. Limitations of the present study and directions for future work are discussed.

Cognitive models posit that social anxiety is associated with biased attention to and interpretation of ambiguous social cues as threatening. We investigated attentional bias (selective early fixation on the eye region) to account for the tendency to distrust ambiguous smiling faces with non-happy eyes (interpretative bias). Eye movements and fixations were recorded while observers viewed video-clips displaying dynamic facial expressions. Low (LSA) and high (HSA) socially anxious undergraduates with clinical levels of anxiety judged expressers' trustworthiness. Social anxiety was unrelated to trustworthiness ratings for faces with congruent happy eyes and a smile, and for neutral expressions. However, social anxiety was associated with reduced trustworthiness rating for faces with an ambiguous smile, when the eyes slightly changed to neutrality, surprise, fear, or anger. Importantly, HSA observers looked earlier and longer at the eye region, whereas LSA observers preferentially looked at the smiling mouth region. This attentional bias in social anxiety generalizes to all the facial expressions, while the interpretative bias is specific for ambiguous faces. Such biases are adaptive, as they facilitate an early detection of expressive incongruences and the recognition of untrustworthy expressers (e.g., with fake smiles), with no false alarms when judging truly happy or neutral faces.

One of the few incontrovertible facts about religion is that it is of enormous importance worldwide. There are various ways of assessing religiosity. Two very common ones are by asking people to indicate whether religion is an important part of their daily lives and whether they attended a religious service or worship in the past week. Diener, Tay, and Myers (2011) found in a study covering 154 countries that 78 per cent of people reported religion was important in their lives. However, their data did not include China – adding data about China from a previous study, they estimated that 68 per cent of humans (approximately 4.6 billion people) regard religion as an important part of their daily lives.

There have been many attempts to account theoretically for the effects of anxiety on cognitive performance. This article focuses on two theories based on insights from cognitive psychology. The more recent is the attentional control theory ( Eysenck, Derakshan, Santos, & Calvo, 2007 ), which developed from the earlier processing efficiency theory ( Eysenck & Calvo, 1992 ). Both theories assume there is a fundamental distinction between performance effectiveness (quality of performance) and processing efficiency (the relationship between performance effectiveness and use of processing resources), and that anxiety impairs processing efficiency more than performance effectiveness. Both theories also assume that anxiety impairs the efficiency of the central executive component of the working memory system. In addition, attentional control theory assumes that anxiety impairs the efficiency of two types of attentional control: (1) negative attentional control (involved in inhibiting attention to task-irrelevant stimuli); and (2) positive attentional control (involved in flexibly switching attention between and within tasks to maximize performance). Recent (including unpublished) research relevant to theoretical predictions from attentional control theory is discussed. In addition, future directions for theory and research in the area of anxiety and performance are presented.

Investigating problem-solving performance, Ishida, H. (2005). College students’ perfectionism and task-strategy inefficience: Why their efforts go unrewarded? Japanese Journal of Social Psychology, 20, 208–215. Found high levels of perfectionism were associated with lower efficiency. Aiming to replicate and further explore this finding, the present study investigated how two dimensions of perfectionism (high standards, discrepancy between expectations and performance) predicted efficiency in proof-reading performance. N = 96 students completed a proof-reading task involving the detection of spelling, grammar, and format errors. When error-detection performance was subjected to signal detection analysis, high standards correlated positively with the number of incorrectly detected errors (false alarms). Moreover, when task-completion time was taken into account, high standards were negatively correlated with efficiency (accuracy/time). In comparison, discrepancy correlated negatively with the number of correctly detected errors (hits) and positively with a conservative response bias. The findings show that perfectionistic standards are associated with reduced efficiency demonstrating the importance of considering invested time, errors, and response bias when investigating the relationship between perfectionism and performance.

To investigate the processing of emotional words by covert attention, threat-related, positive, and neutral word primes were presented parafoveally (2.2° away from fixation) for 150 ms, under gaze-contingent foveal masking, to prevent eye fixations. The primes were followed by a probe word in a lexical-decision task. In Experiment 1, results showed a parafoveal threat–anxiety superiority: Parafoveal prime threat words facilitated responses to probe threat words for high-anxiety individuals, in comparison with neutral and positive words, and relative to low-anxiety individuals. This reveals an advantage in threat processing by covert attention, without differences in overt attention. However, anxiety was also associated with greater familiarity with threat words, and the parafoveal priming effects were significantly reduced when familiarity was covaried out. To further examine the role of word knowledge, in Experiment 2, vocabulary and word familiarity were equated for low- and high-anxiety groups. In these conditions, the parafoveal threat–anxiety advantage disappeared. This suggests that the enhanced covert-attention effect depends on familiarity with words.

A vigilance–avoidance theory of the repressive coping style (low trait anxiety and high defensiveness) is presented. The new theory attempts to account for several key findings, including the discrepancy between low self-reported anxiety and high behavioural and physiological indicators of anxiety shown by individuals with a repressive coping style. According to the theory, repressors have an initial rapid vigilant response triggering behavioural and physiological responses and involving attentional and interpretive biases to self-relevant threat stimuli. These biases may be based on negative self-relevant schematic information. This initial vigilant stage is followed by an avoidance stage involving avoidant cognitive biases (attentional, interpretive, and memory) that inhibit the conscious experience of anxiety. Future research should examine systematically the time course of repressors’ reactions to threatening and non-threatening stimuli.

Rigorously researched and accessibly written, Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s Handbook is widely regarded as the leading undergraduate textbook in the field. The book is clearly organised, and offers comprehensive coverage of all the key areas of cognitive psychology. With a strong focus on considering human cognition in context, the book has been designed to help students develop a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of cognitive psychology, providing them with detailed knowledge of the very latest advances in the field. New to this edition: Thoroughly revised throughout to include the latest research and developments in the field Extended coverage of cognitive neuroscience Additional content on computational cognitive science New and updated case studies demonstrating real life applications of cognitive psychology Fully updated companion website Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s Handbook will be essential reading for all undergraduate students of psychology. Those taking courses in computer science, education, linguistics, physiology, and medicine will also find it an invaluable resource.

Although there is an enormous amount of literature demonstrating socio-psychological determinants of suicide and self-injurious behaviour among adults or clinical samples of children and adolescents, there is a scarcity of studies focussing on non-clinical adolescent samples. The current study examined associations between self-reported data on self-image, physical and psychological health and suicidal cognitions, self-injurious behaviour and suicidal intent in a large representative sample of German high-school students. Almost 1000 German adolescents (aged 14-18 years) were administered a comprehensive series of questionnaires aimed at assessing anxiety-depression, trait addiction, smoking and drinking behaviour, physical ill-health reports and self-perception of self-image, parental acceptance and educational attainment. Several statements were incorporated to assess self-injury and suicidal ideation. An attempt was made to identify risk and offer preventative factors of adolescent suicide. Suicidal ideation is significantly more endorsed among female than male adolescents: twice as many female adolescents tend to have wishes about being dead or have contemplated suicide than males. Girls also tended to have implemented significantly more self-destructive behaviour than boys. Over one-third of the variance observed in subjective reported suicidal ideation was explained by the socio-psychological variables. The common general significant predictor was anxiety-depression, and for males the specific somatic factor was general colds. In contrast, females displayed several specific significant determinants of suicidal ideation, including educational threat and the somatic variable, circulatory ailments. Conversely, tiredness, social problems and maternal rejection were statistically significant predictors of suicidal ideation but again the direction of impact was opposite to what was anticipated.

It has been suggested that writing auditorily presented words at encoding involves distinctive translation processes between visual and auditory domains, leading to the formation of distinctive memory traces at retrieval. This translation effect leads to higher levels of recognition than the writing of visually presented words, a non-translation effect. The present research investigated whether writing and the other translation effect of vocalisation (vocalising visually presented words) would be present in tests of recall, recognition memory and whether these effects are based on the subjective experience of remembering or knowing. Experiment 1 found a translation effect in the auditory domain in recall, as the translation effect of writing yielded higher recall than both non-translation effects of vocalisation and silently hearing. Experiment 2 found a translation effect in the visual domain in recognition, as the translation effect of vocalisation yielded higher recognition than both non-translation effects of writing and silently reading. This translation effect was attributable to the subjective experience of remembering rather than knowing. The present research therefore demonstrates the beneficial effect of translation in both recall and recognition, with the effect of vocalisation in recognition being based on rich episodic remembering.

Discrepancies between physiological activity, behavioural anxiety, and self-reported anxiety were examined when focus of attention was manipulated in a public speech task for four groups of individuals: repressors, low-anxious, high-anxious, and the defensive high-anxious. They were exposed to self-focus (when their behaviour was socially evaluated) and other-focus (when their behaviour was not socially evaluated) conditions. Repressors had consistently the lowest level of self-reported anxiety, but had consistently greater physiological activity in all conditions and greater behavioural anxiety in the self-focus condition. The high-anxious showed the opposite pattern, i.e. their self-reported anxiety was greater than their physiological and behavioural anxiety, and this finding was significant in the self-focus condition. No significant pattern of discrepancy was found for the low-anxious or defensive high-anxious groups. The findings are discussed and interpreted within the framework of recent cognitive models of anxiety.

The time course of a bias in predicting danger as a function of a repressive coping style was examined. The participants belonged to repressor, low - anxious, or high - anxious groups. They read context sentences predictive of threat or nonthreat event outcomes, followed by target words for rapid naming representing the outcomes. The interval between context and target word was 50 ms (Experiment 1), 550 ms (Experiment 2), or 1050 ms (Experiments 3 and 4). There was bias for naming words confirming threatening outcomes: (a) for repressors in the 550-ms delay condition; and (b) for high - anxiety participants in the 1050-ms delay condition. Repressive coping facilitated early processing of threat, but inhibited late processing, whereas high anxiety was characterised by sustained vigilance for threat. There were clear differences in threat processing by repressors and the low - anxious participants

Self-reported measures of trait anxiety and defensiveness were obtained from 158 participants, and other-ratings on the same dimensions were obtained from raters who knew them well. Repressers (individuals low in trait anxiety and high in defensiveness) had significantly higher other-rated than self-reported trait anxiety, whereas high-anxious individuals (high in trait anxiety and low in defensiveness) and defensive high-anxious individuals (high in trait anxiety and defensivenesss) had significantly lower other-rated than self-reported trait anxiety. Repressors had significantly lower self-reported than other-rated trait anxiety, whereas high-anxious and defensive high-anxious individuals had higher self-reported than other-rated trait anxiety. The findings were related to a theory of trait anxiety proposed by Eysenck (Anxiety and Cognition: A Unified Theory 1997, Hove, UK: Psychology Press) and Eysenck and Derakshan (Cognitive approaches to trait anxiety, submitted).

Three major personality dimensions were identified: extroversion, neuroticism and psychoticism. According to the theorizing, extraversion and psychoticism were predicted to be negatively related to religiosity, whereas neuroticism was positively related. The evidence has generally failed to support the predictions with respect to extraversion and neuroticism. However, low psychoticism is consistently related to religiosity, and this relationship is stronger with respect to the personal rather than public orientation to religion. Most of the available evidence is correlational in nature, so it is very difficult to explain this relationship. Future research should be broadened to include longitudinal studies and mood manipulations in order to clarify the processes underlying the potentially important links between psychoticism and religiosity.

German adolescents were administered three questionnaires to assess Trait Anxiety (STAI), psychological self, social- and sexual-self, self-adjustment and family relationships (Offer Self-image Questionnaire), as well as parental involvement, achievement orientation, family cohesiveness, obediency and parental conflict (Attitude towards Parents and Schooling Inventory). There were few differences between sexes in terms of any of the personality variables3with the exception of impulsivity—but several differences along the attitude scales (achievement orientation, obediency and parental conflict). Several significant differences were yielded between low and high trait anxiety Ss and the self-image scales, particularly those associated with negative affect e.g. negative body image, impulsivity, emotionality and mental ill-health. Moreover, high trait neurotic Ss displayed greater parental conflict and lowered family cohesiveness (both scales being themselves highly correlated with the dimension of negative affect) compared to their more stable (low anxiety) counterparts. These relationships were not moderated by gender. The implication of these studies are discussed.

Allan Hobson’s lectures on Dream Consciousness represent an impressive contribution to our understanding of dreaming and consciousness, being both intellectually coherent and comprehensive. I agree with his central assumption that there are strong correlations between the brain and the mind. It is surely correct that identifying the precise pattern of brain activity during dreaming will provide important insights into the nature and function of consciousness.

Eysenck (1984, Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 22, 545–548) suggested that storage characteristics may be an important determinant of worry, and postulated that prolonged worry occurs in individuals who have tightly organised clusters of worry-related information stored in long-term memory. These clusters reflect areas or domains of worry. Because the information is stored in tight clusters, it becomes more accessible, more rapidly activated and therefore retrieved more quickly. The Worry Domains Questionnaire (WDQ) (Tallis, 1991c) is used to determine which domain worried subjects most (Primary) and least (Secondary). Two experiments are reported using a word allocation task, which requires subjects to make categorical decisions, based on these worry domains. It is reported that priming facilitates the emergence of domain effects, thus providing support for a structural hypothesis. High worriers take longer to reject negative words if they are from the Primary domain and have difficulty rejecting Primary domain words when they are under a congruent heading. In addition, high worriers are reported to show retarded latencies when attempting to process ambiguous information, consistent with Metzger et al.'s studies (1990, Journal of Clinical Psychology, 48, 76–88). It is suggested that the initiation and maintenance of worry is largely attributable to an elevated evidence requirement and this may link to the personality trait of perfectionism.

The experiments reported here were designed to test predictions from a cognitive theory of personality proposed by M. W. Eysenck (1997). According to that theory, many of the observed differences between individuals high in trait anxiety and repressors (individuals low in trait anxiety and high in social desirability) depend on underlying individual differences in cognitive biases. It follows from the theory that high-anxious individuals should have an interpretive bias for their own behavior in social situations, that is, they exaggerate how anxious it is. In contrast, repressors should have an opposite interpretive bias for their own behavior, that is, they underestimate how anxious it is. Evidence consistent with these predictions was obtained in Experiments 1 and 2. Implications of these findings for cognitive theories of personality are discussed.

Predicted and actual examination performance, beliefs in various possible examination outcomes and events, and worrying about examinations were assessed in four groups of students (low-anxious, repressor, high-anxious, and defensive high-anxious). The evidence indicated that the high-anxious and defensive high-anxious groups were unrealistically pessimistic about some examination-related events (they possessed an interpretive bias for such events), whereas the repressor groups were unrealistically optimistic about some examination related events, showing an opposite interpretive bias. The findings were interpreted in the light of a new theory of trait anxiety proposed by Eysenck (Anxiety and cognition: A unified theory. Hove: Psychology Press, 1977).

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between individual differences in personality and susceptibility to stress in the workplace. Stress in lecturers employed by a computer training organization was assessed by means of self-report and measurement of salivary cortisol output during lecturing and non-lecturing weeks. Neuroticism, Type A behaviour pattern and locus of control were measured. Self-reported stress was found to be much greater during lecturing weeks, but cortisol levels were unaffected by working conditions. There was a significant positive correlation between neuroticism and locus of control and a negative correlation between locus of control and Type A behaviour pattern that approached significance. Multiple regression was employed to explore relations between personality and stress. Subjects with lower neuroticism scores yielded a bigger increase in reported stress, in the lecturing compared with the non-lecturing week, than subjects with high neuroticism scores...

The time course of the bias in predictive inferencing as a function of anxiety was examined. Ambiguous sentences (concerned with ego-threat, physicalthreat, or nonthreat events) were presented, followed by disambiguating sentences in which a target word either confirmed or disconfirmed the consequences implied by the ambiguous context. High- and low-anxiety subjects read the sentences at their own pace with the moving-window procedure. Effects on word reading times at different points were measured. Priming effects occurred for high-anxiety subjects when reading disambiguating ego-threat-related sentences: There was greater relative facilitation for confirming than for disconfirming ego-threat versions in high-anxiety subjects, compared with physical-threat and nonthreat versions, and with low-anxiety subjects. Because these effects were not observed in the target word itself but in the post-target region and the last word of the disambiguating sentence, we concluded that the bias towards ego-threat predi...

The present article reviews and evaluates the history of theory and research on the concept of repression and, its personality characteristic, the repressive coping style. The four-factor theory ( Eyseneck, 1997 ), a comprehensive cognitive theory of repressors, attempts to provide evidence for the avoidant or defensive cognitive processors allegedly underlying repression. According to the four-factor theory, individuals with a repressive coping style (repressors) possess opposite cognitive biases for both external and internal stimuli. In other words, they avoid attending to, and tend to interpret, four sources of information — environmental stimuli, their own physiological activity, their own behavior, and information stored in long term memory — in a nonthreatening fashion. Some evidence consistent with these predictions is discussed. Also, the four-factor theory attempts to account for some failures of concordance among the self-report, behavioral, physiological, measures of anxiety found in repressors.

The effects of test anxiety and evaluative stress on reading speed, articulatory rehearsal, reading regressions, and comprehension were examined. High- and low-test-anxiety subjects read texts under conditions of stress (Studies 1, 2 and 3) or non-stress (Study 4). Texts were presented either with concurrent irrelevant speech (heard), an articulatory suppression task, or no concurrent task. Measures of working memory span and prior vacabulary knowledge were collected under non-stress conditions (Study 5). There were no differences in comprehension performance as a function of anxiety, but high anxious subjects were less efficient than low-anxious subjects, as the former employed more reading time and regressions, though not more articulation, than the latter to obtain an equivalent comprehension score. Reading regressions emerged as the most discriminating compensatory strategy associated with anxiety. This reduced efficiency is partly dependent on a basic deficit in vocabulary knowledge—but not ...

Relations were investigated between three measures of individual differences (Neuroticism, Type A/B personality and Locus of Control) and measures of stress in response to the challenge of performing mental arithmetic. Three types of dependent measure were recorded, self-report (stress and arousal), psychophysiological (heart rate and skin resistance) and performance (number of problems attempted and proportion correct). Relations between the individual difference measures (and their interactions) and the stress and performance measures were assessed by multiple regression. Heart rate increased and skin resistance decreased during mental arithmetic, the increase in heart rate being less in subjects scoring higher on neuroticism. These subjects also reported higher stress levels, but no greater increase in stress during the task. The number of mental arithmetic problems attempted was a complex function of the combination of the three individual difference measures, but the probability of a correct answer was related only to Locus of Control, Internal subjects performing better than Externals. Type B subjects increased their probability of a correct answer from the first to the second test session, while Type A subjects showed no improvement. These results show that different types of response to stress are related to individual differences in complex patterns, and several independent and dependent measures are needed to provide a comprehensive picture.

The hypothesis that test anxiety is associated with an on-line bias towards threatening interpretations of ambiguous information was explored by means of a lexical decision task. Ambiguous sentences (concerned with ego-threat, physical-threat, or non-threat events) were presented to high- and low- test-anxiety subjects. Sentences were followed by a disambiguating word or a very wordlike corresponding nonword, which either confirmed or disconfirmed the threat implied by the sentence. A control condition involved the presentation of words and nonwords alone, without being primed by the sentences. Results indicated that there were no differences in lexical decision times as a function of test anxiety when words and nonwords were presented alone. In contrast, when they were primed, high-anxiety subjects took longer to respond correctly to the ego-threat confirming nonword, and to the ego-threat disconfirming word, compared with low-anxiety subjects; likewise, high-anxiety subjects responded faster to...

A new model of worry is presented, differing from previous work in which worry was set within a broader theory of anxiety. It is proposed that threat is initially evaluated in terms of imminence, likelihood, and cost set against perceived self-efficacy; this evaluation can produce worry as a relatively automatic response. Worry serves the functions of alarm, prompt, and preparation; in terms of processes, it leads to an unfocused attentional style, sensitivity to emotional information, and arousal (which produces self-absorption). Threat (and worry) are maintained if there are elevated evidence requirements or inappropriate problem solving. The therapeutic implications of the model are discussed briefly.

A principal components analysis of the ten scales of the Worry Questionnaire revealed the existence of major worry factors or domains of social evaluation and physical threat, and these factors were confirmed in a subsequent item analysis. Those high in trait anxiety had much higher scores on the Worry Questionnaire than those low in trait anxiety, especially on those scales relating to social evaluation. Scores on the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale were negatively related to worry frequency. However, groups of low-anxious and repressed individuals formed on the basis of their trait anxiety and social desirability scores did not differ in worry. It was concluded that worry, especially in the social evaluation domain, is of fundamental importance to trait anxiety.

Anxiety often impairs performance of “difficult” tasks (especially under test conditions), but there are numerous exceptions. Theories of anxiety and performance need to address at least two major issues: (1) the complexity and apparent inconsistency of the findings; and (2) the conceptual definition of task difficulty. Some theorists (e.g. Humphreys & Revelle, 1984; Sarason, 1988) argue that anxiety causes worry, and worry always impairs performance on tasks with high attentional or short-term memory demands. According to the processing efficiency theory, worry has two main effects: (1) a reduction in the storage and processing capacity of the working memory system available for a concurrent task; and (2) an increment in on-task effort and activities designed to improve performance. There is a crucial distinction within the theory between performance effectiveness (= quality of performance) and processing efficiency (= performance effectiveness divided by effort). Anxiety characteristically impa...

Susceptibility to distraction as a function of trait anxiety was investigated. The subjects were given a reaction-time task to perform, and distraction effects were assessed by performance slowing on this task. High trait-anxious subjects were generally more affected by distracting stimuli than were medium and low trait-anxious subjects. However, more detailed analyses revealed that this greater susceptibility to distraction among high trait-anxious subjects occurred primarily when the distractor words related to physical threat rather than when they were neutral, positive, or related to social threat. Theoretical implications of these findings for understanding trait anxiety and the aetiology of clinical anxiety are discussed.

Attentional responses to threat stimuli were assessed in anxious patients, normal controls, and subjects who had recovered from a clinical anxiety state. The main aims of the study were: (1) to rep...

Existing measures of worry content were designed to ascertain levels of worry in special groups, particularly children and the elderly. In the present study, cluster analysis techniques were employed to develop a measure of worry suitable for use on a nonclinical adult population. The Worry Domains Questionnaire (WDQ) yields a global score which is calculated by summing scores on 5 subscales: these subscales, or domains, are labelled (1) Relationships (2) Lack of Confidence (3) Aimless Future (4) Work Incompetence and (5) Financial. Content differences between pathological and nonpathological worry are considered.

It is suggested that worry has not been given serious academic attention due to problems of definition, and a prevailing belief that it is an unnecessary addition to the theorists vocabulary given the term “anxiety”. However, an increasing awareness of the importance of cognitive factors in emotional disorders makes the study of worry a necessary endeavour. Furthermore, inclusion of worry in DSM III-R as the principle diagnostic index of Generalised Anxiety Disorder has given the term clinical credibility. Three theoretical approaches to the subject of worry are considered: the test anxiety literature, which has focused on the effects of worry on performance, and two largely clinical accounts, a tripartite theory of worry and anxiety proposed by Borkovec, Metzger, and Pruzinsky (1986), and the model of anxious apprehension proposed by Barlow (1988). All approaches are critically evaluated, and suggestions made for future formulations.

Eysenck (Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 22, 545–548, 1984) has suggested that the degree to which an individual worries is determined by structural factors; for example, the number of schemata that organise negative information. However, it has proved extremely difficult to demonstrate knowledge base differences between worriers and non-worriers using performance on memory tests as an appropriate measure of modularity. Experiments are reported using a paradigm which reflects two characteristics of ‘real-life’ worry; future orientation and ego-relevance. Under conditions where these two factors are stressed, performance differences on an ‘imaging’ task emerge which can be attributed to structural differences between high and low worriers.

Work conducted under the auspices of the Pennsylvania State University Worry Project suggests that worriers show retarded responding when attempting to categorise ambiguous figures. Recent research has yielded similar findings. These effects might be attributed to a characteristic elevated evidence requirement in high worriers. In the following, an experiment is reported which supports this notion. Further, a correlational analysis is reported which reveals a systematic association between evidence requirements and everyday worry frequency. A model of worry is suggested, in which elevated evidence requirements are given a central role.

Introduction The main emphasis of this chapter is on the personality dimension of trait anxiety, which is concerned with individual differences in the tendency to experience anxiety and related negative emotional states. There is general agreement among personality researchers and theorists that trait anxiety (or neuroticism) is one of the most important personality dimensions. Most researchers focusing on the structure of human personality (e.g. McCrae & Costa, 1985) accept there are five main personality dimensions or factors (often called the Big Five), of which neuroticism or trait anxiety is one. Thus, there is considerable consensus at the level of description. Note that the terms ‘trait anxiety’ and ‘neuroticism’ will be used more or less interchangeably in what follows. This is justifiable for two reasons. First, the two personality dimensions typically correlate about +0.7 with each other (H. J. Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985; the name ‘Eysenck’ on its own refers to the author of this chapter). Second, there is considerable evidence that trait anxiety and neuroticism are both relatively pure measures of a broad personality dimension known as negative affectivity (Watson & Clark, 1984). However, it should be noted that neuroticism is typically orthogonal to the personality dimension of extraversion, whereas there is a small negative correlation between trait anxiety and extraversion (H. J. Eysenck & Eysenck, 1985). There has been significantly less progress at the level of explanation than at the level of description. In other words, the nature of the mechanisms underlying individual differences in trait anxiety or neuroticism remain unclear. Some of the main theoretical approaches are discussed in this section. Thereafter, the emphasis will be on a theory of trait anxiety proposed by Eysenck (1997).

In his theory of anxiety disorders, Eysenck (1997) argued that focus on one's own behavior is associated with social phobia, whereas focus on future-oriented threat cognitions is associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder. These foci occur in part because social phobics tend to be introverted and obsessive-compulsives either perceive themselves as having onerous responsibilities or actually do have them (e.g., women with infants). These assumptions have empirical support (Eysenck). We can use the theory to predict cross-cultural differences in anxiety disorders. Social phobia should be more common in introverted cultures. We correlated lifetime incidence of social phobia (data: Wittchen & Fehm, 2001) with extraversion (data: Steel & Ones, 2002) across several countries, obtaining the predicted negative correlation (-0.35). We will expand the database to establish definitively the strength of this association. We will also explore the prediction that people in individualistic countries (emphasizing personal responsibility) have a higher incidence of obsessive-compulsive disorder than those in collectivistic countries, a prediction receiving preliminary support (e.g., Essau, Sakano, Ishikawa, & Sasagawa, 2004).

In the 1st of 2 experiments, currently clinically anxious, recovered clinically anxious, and normal control subjects were presented with a mixture of unambiguous and ambiguous sentences; both threatening and nonthreatening interpretations were possible for the latter. A subsequent recognition-memory test indicated that the currently anxious subjects were more likely than normal control and recovered anxious subjects to interpret the ambiguous sentences in a threatening fashion rather than in a nonthreatening fashion. This suggests that the biased interpretation of ambiguity found in currently anxious subjects reflected their anxious mood state. A 2nd experiment established that the difference in interpretative processes between currently anxious and control subjects was not due to response bias and that the interpretative bias was a reasonably general one.

When one considers research and theory on mood disorders and cognition over the past twenty years or so, then one confronts a historical curiosity. In spite of the fact that clinical anxiety and clinical depression are related forms of mood disorder, there has been considerably more research interest in cognition relevant to depression than to anxiety. The same disparity is also apparent at the theoretical level. Major theories by Beck (1976) and by Seligman (1975) attracted the attention of cognitive psychologists, but until recently there was no systematic cognitive theory of clinical anxiety. The reasons for the much greater interest in cognitive approaches to depression than to anxiety are obscure. However, the fact that the conditioning approach was more successful in accounting for anxiety than for depression may have delayed the search for the alternative theoretical formulations of anxiety (J. Teasdale, pers. comm.).

The findings reported by Lewis provide reasonably strong evidence that the religiosity-psychoticism relationship is not 'contaminated' by social desirability. However, it may be important to consider separately the two factors of social desirability (self-deception and other-deception). There is also a need to proceed from description to explanation.