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The influence of certainty and probability on emotional and behavioral reactions within weather anxiety

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Abstract

With the climate continually changing, the interaction between weather and mental health is expected to grow. Weather anxiety and its associated safety behaviors are common experiences that can reach distressing, debilitating, and clinically significant levels. Models of anxiety disorders suggest that cognitive and perceptual biases related to threat probability often contribute to and maintain anxiety, yet this has not been investigated within weather anxiety or its associated safety behaviors. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of severe weather probabilities across visual and written modalities on anxiety, worry, and safety behaviors in those with elevated weather anxiety and safety behavior use. Participants were shown three images and three texts that displayed lower, medium, and higher risk probabilities for severe weather and were asked to rate anxiety, worry, and safety behaviors in response to each level of probability. Results suggested that those with increased weather-related anxiety and safety behaviors displayed less flexibility in anxiety and expected safety behavior use across varying levels of threat probability, relative to those lower in anxiety and safety behavior use. These results support the application of cognitive biases as potential maintenance factors of weather anxiety, a condition that has a significant lack of investigation. Clinical implications and limitations are discussed.

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Material and code availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of Michigan, 4250 Plymouth Rd., Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Jacob D. Kraft

  2. Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Health, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Jacob D. Kraft & Kaitlyn M. Nagel

  3. Department of Psychology, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, 74078, USA

    Burkhart J. Hahn, Danielle E. Deros & DeMond M. Grant

Authors
  1. Jacob D. Kraft
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  2. Burkhart J. Hahn
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  3. Danielle E. Deros
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  4. Kaitlyn M. Nagel
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  5. DeMond M. Grant
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Jacob D. Kraft and DeMond M. Grant. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Jacob D. Kraft and all authors provided revisions and edits. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jacob D. Kraft.

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Ethics approval

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and was approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of Oklahoma State University.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Authors have no competing interests.

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Kraft, J.D., Hahn, B.J., Deros, D.E. et al. The influence of certainty and probability on emotional and behavioral reactions within weather anxiety. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06084-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06084-4

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