Predicting attention and avoidance: When do avoiders attend?

Abstract

Three avoidance measures, the Miller Behavioural Style Scale (MBSS), Index of Self-Regulation of Emotion (ISE) and Mainz Coping Inventory (MCI), were compared in their ability to predict attention and avoidance of threats in the emotional Stroop task. It was also examined if the avoidance mechanism of individuals who would normally avoid threat-indicating words becomes disrupted under conditions of dopamine reduction. Results show that only the ISE predicted attention/avoidance of threat-indicating words. In addition, the avoidance mechanism, as measured by the ISE and MCI, was not activated when regular smokers abstained from smoking.

Keywords:

• cognitive avoidance
• repressive defensiveness
• cigarettes
• nicotine
• emotional Stroop task

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Debora D’Iuso for her assistance in data collection and to Dr Pihl for the use of the CO monitor used to assess smoking abstinence. We also appreciate the help of Kitty Nga Man who designed the webpage for the online portion of the study. The research was supported by Fonds de Recherché sur la Société et la Culture. Bourse de doctorate en recherché.

Notes

Notes

1. Gross et al. (1993) found that abstainers had longer reaction times (i.e. vigilance) to smoking words compared to regular smokers. Methodological differences in the Stroop task may account for this finding (Holle, Heimberg, & Neely, 1997; Kindt, Bierman, & Brosschot, 1996).

2. To demonstrate that avoidance is specific to smokers, regression analyses were conducted on non-smokers with the avoidance classifications as predictors and smoking word RTs as the criterion. None of the measures significantly predicted word reaction times.