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Fear and anxiety in the face of COVID-19: Negative dispositions towards risk and uncertainty as vulnerability factors

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic it is important to identify factors that make people particularly vulnerable of developing mental-health issues in order to provide case-specific treatments. In this article, we examine the roles of two psychological constructs – originally put forth in the behav...

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Autores principales: Millroth, Philip, Frey, Renato
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8426312/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34298237
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2021.102454
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author Millroth, Philip
Frey, Renato
author_facet Millroth, Philip
Frey, Renato
author_sort Millroth, Philip
collection PubMed
description In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic it is important to identify factors that make people particularly vulnerable of developing mental-health issues in order to provide case-specific treatments. In this article, we examine the roles of two psychological constructs – originally put forth in the behavioral decision sciences – in predicting interindividual differences in fear responses: general risk aversion (GRA) and intolerance of uncertainty (IU). We first provide a review of these constructs and illustrate why they may play important roles in shaping anxiety-related disorders. Thereafter we present an empirical study that collected survey data from 550 U.S. residents, comprising self-assessments of dispositions towards risk and uncertainty, anxiety- and depression levels, as well as demographic variables – to thus test the extent to which these psychological constructs are predictive of strong fear responses related to COVID-19 (i.e., mortal fear, racing heart). The results from Bayesian multi-model inference analyses showed that GRA and IU were more powerful predictors of fear responses than demographic variables. Moreover, the predictive power of these constructs was independent of general anxiety- and depression levels. Subsequent mediation analyses showed that the effects of GRA and IU were both direct and indirect via anxiety. We conclude by discussing possible treatment options, but also highlight that future research needs to further examine causal pathways and conceptual overlaps.
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spelling pubmed-84263122021-09-09 Fear and anxiety in the face of COVID-19: Negative dispositions towards risk and uncertainty as vulnerability factors Millroth, Philip Frey, Renato J Anxiety Disord Article In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic it is important to identify factors that make people particularly vulnerable of developing mental-health issues in order to provide case-specific treatments. In this article, we examine the roles of two psychological constructs – originally put forth in the behavioral decision sciences – in predicting interindividual differences in fear responses: general risk aversion (GRA) and intolerance of uncertainty (IU). We first provide a review of these constructs and illustrate why they may play important roles in shaping anxiety-related disorders. Thereafter we present an empirical study that collected survey data from 550 U.S. residents, comprising self-assessments of dispositions towards risk and uncertainty, anxiety- and depression levels, as well as demographic variables – to thus test the extent to which these psychological constructs are predictive of strong fear responses related to COVID-19 (i.e., mortal fear, racing heart). The results from Bayesian multi-model inference analyses showed that GRA and IU were more powerful predictors of fear responses than demographic variables. Moreover, the predictive power of these constructs was independent of general anxiety- and depression levels. Subsequent mediation analyses showed that the effects of GRA and IU were both direct and indirect via anxiety. We conclude by discussing possible treatment options, but also highlight that future research needs to further examine causal pathways and conceptual overlaps. The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2021-10 2021-07-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8426312/ /pubmed/34298237 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2021.102454 Text en © 2021 The Author(s) Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Millroth, Philip
Frey, Renato
Fear and anxiety in the face of COVID-19: Negative dispositions towards risk and uncertainty as vulnerability factors
title Fear and anxiety in the face of COVID-19: Negative dispositions towards risk and uncertainty as vulnerability factors
title_full Fear and anxiety in the face of COVID-19: Negative dispositions towards risk and uncertainty as vulnerability factors
title_fullStr Fear and anxiety in the face of COVID-19: Negative dispositions towards risk and uncertainty as vulnerability factors
title_full_unstemmed Fear and anxiety in the face of COVID-19: Negative dispositions towards risk and uncertainty as vulnerability factors
title_short Fear and anxiety in the face of COVID-19: Negative dispositions towards risk and uncertainty as vulnerability factors
title_sort fear and anxiety in the face of covid-19: negative dispositions towards risk and uncertainty as vulnerability factors
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8426312/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34298237
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2021.102454
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