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Anxiety and defensiveness: individual differences in affective startle modulation

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Abstract

Anxious individuals selectively attend to threatening information, and defensiveness may influence the experience and expression of anxiety. Fifty-eight undergraduates scoring high and low on measures of anxiety and defensiveness viewed pleasant, neutral, and unpleasant pictures. Acoustic startle probes were presented 60, 240, or 2,000 ms after picture onset. At 60 ms and 240 ms, repressors (low anxiety, high defensiveness) showed weaker blinks during both pleasant and unpleasant compared to neutral pictures, suggesting enhanced early attention to affective stimuli, regardless of valence. At 2,000 ms, high-anxious but not low anxious participants showed potentiated startle responses during unpleasant compared to pleasant pictures. Although this result replicated previous research on anxiety and valence modulation of startle, exploratory analyses suggested that the valence effect was restricted to trait anxious individuals tending toward a defensive coping style. Across probe conditions, defensiveness was associated with heightened startle reactivity independent of self-reported anxiety and foreground stimulus characteristics.

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Notes

  1. IAPS slide numbers: Unpleasant, males: 2480, 2570, 3015, 3071, 3102, 3110, 3120, 3130, 3140, 3168, 3170, 3180, 3266, 3350, 3530, 7185, 7187, 9040, 9405, 9410, 9520, 9560, 9570, 9810; females: 2800, 3015, 3030, 3102, 3110, 3120, 3130, 3140, 3168, 3170, 3180, 3266, 3301, 3530, 6313, 9040, 9253, 9405, 9410, 9433, 9570, 9571, 9800, 9921. Pleasant slides, males: 1710, 4002, 4150, 4180, 4210, 4220, 4232, 4250, 4607, 4652, 4659, 4664, 4670, 4680, 5130, 5510, 5700, 7000, 7090, 8080, 8170, 8190, 8501; females: 1463, 1710, 1811, 2050, 2058, 2150, 2160, 2165, 2209, 2216, 2550, 4610, 5621, 5910, 7270, 7330, 7502, 8190, 8200, 8370, 8380, 8420, 8470, 8496; Neutral slides, males and females: 2190, 2440, 2840, 3030, 5520, 5530, 5740, 6570, 7006, 7020, 7025, 7035, 7040, 7050, 7060, 7150, 7217, 7233, 7235, 7490, 7491, 7950, 9433, 9910. Ratings of individual pictures are available from the authors upon request.

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Acknowledgments

This work was completed as part of the first author’s doctoral dissertation under the supervision of the second author. The authors wish to acknowledge the following individuals who served on the dissertation committee, and who made valuable contributions to the study: Lori L. Davis, M.D., Sheryl R. Jackson, Ph.D., Roy C. Martin, Ph.D., Michael E. Sloane, Ph.D., and Rex A. Wright, Ph.D.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 415 Campbell Hall, 1530 3rd Avenue South, Birmingham, AL, 35294-1170, UK

    Richard O. Temple & Edwin W. Cook III

  2. The Transitional Learning Center, 1528 Postoffice Street, Galveston, TX, 77550, USA

    Richard O. Temple

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  1. Richard O. Temple
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  2. Edwin W. Cook III
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Correspondence to Richard O. Temple.

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Temple, R.O., Cook, E.W. Anxiety and defensiveness: individual differences in affective startle modulation. Motiv Emot 31, 115–123 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-007-9062-0

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