Conscious intrusion of threat information via unconscious priming in anxiety

Abstract

Preferential processing of threat has been implicated in the development and perpetuation of anxiety. We investigated threat processing and anxiety using a subliminal priming paradigm. People with high or low trait anxiety viewed masked, briefly presented words, and then took an exclusion-completion test in which three-letter stems were to be completed without using recently perceived words. Completion rates were greater for words viewed subliminally compared to a baseline estimate. In addition, unconscious priming was greater for threat than for neutral words in the high-trait-anxiety group, and for neutral than for threat words in the low-trait-anxiety group. Enhanced unconscious priming of threat completions among anxious individuals may model intrusions in anxiety, when unconscious processing breaks into consciousness in the form of threat-related intrusive thoughts.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by National Institutes of Health grant NS 34639 and National Science Foundation grant BCS 051880.

We thank Karuna Subramamian for assistance with data collection, and Philip Merikle, Susan Mineka, and William Revelle for advice and comments on this work.

Notes

¹This type of mask may not provide maximal restrictions on conscious processing, but it was effective in most participants in the present study, and was comparable to those used in related studies (Beauregard et al., 1999; Wikström et al., 2003). Whether a different type of mask would produce the same patterns of unconscious priming is unknown.

²We also analysed stem-completion data without counting inflected forms as completions, and results were essentially identical. Results of the re-analysis are available upon request.

³We also analysed trait anxiety as a continuous variable. Consistent with ANOVA results, unconscious threat processing (threat-minus-neutral priming score) was positively correlated with trait anxiety (r=.47, p<.01).