Integrating Schizotypy: Perspectives from Cognitive Neuroscience

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Fear and anxiety as separable emotions an
investigation of the revised reinforcement
sensitivity theory of personality Adam
Perkins Samantha Kemp Philip Corr Department of
Psychology University of Wales Swansea email
342095_at_swansea.ac.uk
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Ethoexperimental findings by the Blanchards

• Drugs that are effective against Generalized
  Anxiety Disorder (GAD) reduce the risk assessment
  and defensive threat/attack aspects of rodent
  behaviour
• Drugs effective against panic disorder reduce
  flight without affecting other rodent defensive
  behaviours
• These results suggest that defensive reactions
  form two clusters, each associated with a
  different negative emotion fear and anxiety

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Previous findings

• Typical correlations between fear and trait
  anxiety/neuroticism are between .3 and .5
• Fear and trait anxiety/neuroticism therefore seem
  not to be interchangeable
• But no study so far has tested this statistically

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Limitation of study 1

• Although numerous well-established questionnaire
  measures of fear exist, they tend to have been
  developed for the specific purpose of discovering
  the focus of a patients phobia rather than
  measuring personality per se

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Aim of study 2

• To examine the extent to which fear questionnaire
  scores account for unique variance in behaviour
  in a military examination that tests tactical
  judgement in combat scenarios

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Fear facets measured by FSS

• Animal fear
• Social/interpersonal fear
• Tissue damage fear
• Noise fear
• Classic phobias

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Subsidiary goal of study 2

• To examine the extent to which fear accounts for
  variance in performance that is not accounted for
  by other personality constructs including anxiety

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Summary of research aims

• To explore Gray McNaughtons (2000) hypothesis
  that fear and anxiety are separable a) by testing
  correlations between relevant personality
  questionnaire scores, b) by determining whether
  fear scores account for unique variance in
  performance in a non-clinical setting and c) by
  assessing how fear and anxiety predict
  performance in comparison to other measures of
  personality.

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Method

• Study 1 participants 141 members of the general
  public (58 males and 83 females), aged between 18
  and 77 (mean 29.03 SD 8.40), participated in
  return for 8 payment
• Study 2 participants 101 members of the UK
  University Officer Training Corps (UOTC), aged
  between 18 and 23 years (60 male, 41 female),
  with an average age of 20 (SD 0.87)

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Results of study 1

• Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------
• Trait anxiety - -.033 -.216 .761 -.069 .291
• Psychoticism -.311 - .204 -.125 .013 .017
• Extraversion -.241 .131 - -.234 -.023 .023
• Neuroticism .741 -.183 -.074 - -.019 .352
• Lie -.097 -.213 -.044 -.180 - .324
• Total fear .205 -.209 -.066 .212 .041 -
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------
• Note. N 141 (correlations for 58 males in
  lower half of matrix, 83 females in upper half of
  matrix).
• . p lt .05.
• . p lt .01.

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Results of study 2

• Predictor of performance ß coefficients
• ----------------------------------------------
  -------------------------------------
• RST RST (facets) EPQ RST/EPQ
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  -----------------
• Trait anxiety -.193 -.213 - -.152
• BAS .310 .249 - .271
• Total fear -.198 - - -.215
• Animal fear - -.138 - -
• Social fear - -.159 - -
• Tissue damage fear - -.329 - -
• Noise fear - .113 - -
• Classic phobias - .060 - -
• Psychoticism - - -.033 .122
• Extraversion - - .297 -.009
• Neuroticism - - -.215 -.102
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------------------------
  -----------------
• Note. N 101. Model 1 adjusted R2 .291, Model
  2 adjusted R2 .284, Model 3 adjusted R2 .168,
  Model 4 adjusted R2 .292.
• . p lt .05.
• p lt .01.

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Conclusions

• The present findings provide two levels of
  support for Gray McNaughtons (2000) hypothesis
  that fear and anxiety are separable first,
  fear-anxiety correlations revealed that these
  constructs are not interchangeable at the
  psychometric level and, second, regression
  analysis revealed that fear questionnaire scores
  captured significant variance in performance that
  was not shared with anxiety (and nor with any of
  the other major personality constructs measured).
  

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Fear and anxiety as separable emotions an
investigation of the revised reinforcement
sensitivity theory of personality Adam
Perkins Samantha Kemp Philip Corr Department of
Psychology University of Wales Swansea email
342095_at_swansea.ac.uk