Anxiety as an “epistemic” emotion: An uncertainty theory of anxiety

Abstract

This paper attempts to provide a conceptual framework placing anxiety in a perceived control perspective. We analyse the basic cognitive components of anxiety with reference to the need for control, both pragmatic and epistemic. We address the difference between fear and anxiety by pointing to the special role played in anxiety by the need for epistemic control and uncertainty reduction. We examine some typical “questions” of anxiety, and some typical “answers” or coping strategies, with special reference to their relationships with either need for control. We focus on the need for epistemic control, its relationship with pragmatic control, its impact on the amount of anxiety experienced, and its role in anxiety-proneness. We address worry and its relationships with anxiety and the needs for control. Finally, we compare our approach with related models, point to its implications for clinical treatment, and discuss the interplay of conscious and unconscious processes in anxiety.

Keywords:

• Anxiety
• fear
• epistemic control
• pragmatic control
• uncertainty
• worry

We wish to thank Reinhard Pekrun and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions and criticisms. Preparation of this paper was in part supported by HUMAINE (European Project IST- 507422). and by MindRACES (European Project IST- 511931).

Notes

1. It is also possible to be “anxious about the failure”, but only if one takes the failure as an event implying some other possible danger, for instance one's own loss of face.

2. Apart from humans’ biological preparedness for developing certain phobias (e.g., Seligman, 1971) in that, in an evolutionary perspective, certain animals or situations represented a threat for survival and adaptation, and apart from the possibility that some phobias are learned through traumatic experiences (associations between a fear reaction and some unrelated object, which later becomes “threatening”), it is often acknowledged that many phobias have no obvious cause, thus leaving some grounds for their being a result of the transfer of an underlying fear or anxiety from a threatening object to a less threatening one.

3. A flowchart is a diagram that shows step-by-step progression through a procedure by means of a set of conventional symbols connected by arrows, showing the order in which each step occurs. Among such symbols, the most common are boxes and diamonds (both with text inside). Each box indicates a step in the process, and each diamond a test or decision point. So, diamonds may have different exit points, depending on the result of the test: if a certain condition holds, then a certain step (or step-chain) should follow; if another condition holds, an alternative step (or step-chain) follows; and so on, for each decision point.

4. To be true, other factors may impact on the amount of anxiety experienced, for instance the urgency of the threat—which can be independent of the goal value—that is, its immediacy, implying the urge to take immediate action.

5. It is worth specifying that the need for epistemic control does not necessarily produce a highly accurate and coherent model of the world. In fact, I may want a certain state of the world (such as “having an accurate model of reality”) to be true, but, as any cognitive system which operates on the basis of representations, what I finally get is a belief about such a state of the world. As a consequence, what I ultimately need is to believe that I have such a coherent and accurate model, that I am able to explain and predict events, and I am not at the mercy of uncertainty. But the more hastily this perceived epistemic control is acquired, under the pressure of a strong need for certainty, the less it is likely to be grounded on actual facts.