Look before you leap: the role of negative urgency in appraisals of ambiguous and unambiguous scenarios in individuals high in generalized anxiety disorder symptoms

ABSTRACT

Negative interpretation bias, the propensity to make threatening interpretations of ambiguous information, is associated with symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Apart from its relationship with intolerance of uncertainty (IU), little is known about what explains the presence of this cognitive bias in GAD. One factor may be negative urgency (NU), the tendency to take rash action when distressed, which is related to GAD symptoms and to cognitive biases in nonclinical populations. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between NU and interpretation bias in individuals high in GAD symptoms (N = 111). IU, trait anxiety, and other forms of impulsivity were examined concurrently as competing correlates of interpretation bias. Greater NU and IU were found to be unique correlates of greater threatening interpretations of ambiguous scenarios. Greater NU was also a unique correlate of greater threatening interpretations of negative and positive scenarios. No other forms of impulsivity were uniquely related to interpretation bias. The findings suggest that greater NU may have a role in the tendency for individuals high in GAD symptoms to make threatening interpretations in response to ambiguous scenarios, overtly threatening situations, and situations without indication of threat or danger. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Generalized anxiety disorder
• worry
• interpretation bias
• negative urgency
• impulsivity
• intolerance of uncertainty
• cognitive processing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The Editor requested the following footnote for interested readers: A short version of the IUS, called the IUS-12 (Carleton, Norton, Asmundson, 2007) is widely used in psychopathology research. We were asked to conduct post hoc tests of our hypotheses using the IUS-12 items, the results of which are summarized below. The analytic approach is the same as in the formal manuscript. The authors can be contacted for a more detailed report of the analyses.

First off, scores on the IUS-12 were positively associated with concern for ambiguous, negative, and positive scenarios. There was no significant difference between the size of these relationships and the size of the associations between the IUS-27 and concern for ambiguous, negative, and positive scenarios.

A hierarchical linear regression was performed with concern for ambiguous scenarios (AUSD-Ambiguous) as the outcome variable. IUS-12 and NU emerged as unique correlates of negative interpretation bias in the final model. These results are in accordance with the findings when the IUS-27 was used.

A second hierarchical linear regression was performed with appraisals of negative scenarios (AUSD-Negative) as the outcome variable. When using the IUS-12, both NU and IU emerge as significant unique correlates in the final model. Of note, when using the IUS-27, the unique relation with interpretations of negative scenarios approached significance (p = .061), but we reported it as nonsignificant in the manuscript.

A third hierarchical linear regression was performed with appraisals of positive scenarios (AUSD-Positive) as the outcome variable. Both IUS-12 and NU emerged as unique correlates of concern for positive scenarios. Using the IUS-27, only NU emerges as a unique correlate of concern for positive scenarios in the final model. The reason for the different findings in predicting concern for positive scenarios when using the IUS-12 compared to the IUS-27 is unknown. This could be investigated further in a future study that may wish to look more closely and systematically at differences in item content.

2. We would like to acknowledge the anonymous reviewer who suggested we conduct these exploratory follow-up post hoc analyses.

3. We would like to acknowledge the anonymous reviewer who suggested that we include this point.

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted with the support of funding from Ryerson University awarded to Naomi Koerner.