Autonomic responses to threatening stimuli in relation to the repression sensitization dimension.

Presented 3 neutral and 3 threat-producing pictures to 20 undergraduate sensitizers and 20 repressers, identified by Byrne's Represser-Sensitizer Scale. The GSR was employed to measure RT of the autonomic responses, affective arousal, and recovery time from affective arousal. In addition, the Herr-Kobler psychogalvanometric test of neuroticism was employed to determine the relative autonomic reactivity of the 2 groups. Results indicate no difference in autonomic RT between or within the groups, or in autonomic reactivity on the index of neuroticism. No difference in affective arousal was found between groups, but both repressers and sensitizers showed greater physiological emotional arousal to critical than to neutral pictures. There was no difference in recovery time from affective arousal between groups, but both groups took longer to recover from critical than from the neutral pictures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preparation for cesarean delivery: A multicomponent analysis of treatment outcome.

We evaluated the effects of sensory information about cesarean delivery on prenatal maternal anxiety and on recovery subsequent to delivery by cesarean section. The 42 participants were recruited from a population of obstetric patients. Patients were assigned to either treatment or control groups and identified as sensitizers or repressors. Treatment groups viewed a slide/tape program presenting procedures involved in cesarean delivery. Control groups viewed a program presenting neutral information. Prepared patients classified as sensitizers showed less physiologic arousal during surgery and enhanced postsurgical recovery. Physiologic and self-report measures of anxiety indicated that the intervention itself was not a stressful event. The relations among arousal, subjective anxiety, coping styles, and treatment outcome are discussed and recommendations are made for further investigation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Need for approval, guilt, and sexual stimulation and their relationship to sexual responsivity.

Describes an experiment in which 111 male undergraduates were given the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability scale and the Mosher Forced-Choice Guilt Scale prior to reading a series of either sexual or neutral passages. Ss rated the extent to which they were sexually aroused, anxious, bored, angry, disgusted, and entertained, and then responded to a sexual double-entendre word association test. Responses indicate that Ss were significantly more sexually aroused after reading the sexual as opposed to the neutral passages. Need approval and guilt scores were not significantly related to stated degree of arousal or any of the other dimensions. Low need-approval Ss showed greater sexual responsivity to the entendres than highs, especially subsequent to reading the sexual passages. For the guilt variable, Ss with low sex guilt demonstrated greater sexual responsivity on the entendres regardless of whether they read neutral or sexual passages. Results suggest that these personality variables affect responding rather than affect arousal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of sex guilt and sexual arousal on the retention of birth control information.

Tested the notion that high-sex-guilt individuals have difficulty retaining sex-related information. 28 male and 28 female undergraduates were assigned in equal numbers to a high and a low sex-guilt group. Within each group, 1/2 of the Ss were sexually stimulated by reading erotic passages, while 1/2 read neutral passages. All Ss then listened to a lecture on birth control and took an exam based on the lecture. Results indicate that high-sex-guilt Ss retained less lecture information than low-guilt Ss. In addition, sexually stimulated Ss displayed poorer lecture retention than nonstimulated Ss. Across all conditions, females retained more lecture information than males. Results support the hypothesis that guilt-generated anxiety raises arousal past the optimum level necessary for efficient recall performance. Females had a greater interest in learning about birth control than males. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Repression-Sensitization scale as a measure of adjustment: Relationship with the CPI.

The repression-sensitization dimension has been hypothesized to be associated with adjustment in a curvilinear fashion with both sensitizers and repressers showing more evidence of maladjustment than neutrals. The Repression-Sensitization (R-S) scale and the CPI were administered to 91 college undergraduates and intercorrelated. Approximately ? of the CPI scales yielded significant negative correlations with the R-S scale. Rather than the hypothesized curvilinear relationship, repressers appear to be the best adjusted of the 3, sensitizers the most maladjusted, while neutrals fall between the 2 defense groups. The 7 CPI scales which relate most consistently to repression-sensitization are Sociability, Sense of Well-Being, Self-Control, Tolerance, Good Impression, Achievement via Conformance, and Intellectual Efficiency. (15 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Denial of threat and emotional response to impending painful stimulation.

Significant negative correlations were obtained between scores on Byrne's Repression-Sensitization (R-S) scale and several indices of electrodermal activity in a paradigm in which Ss anticipated the presentation of strong electric shock. These results support the hypothesis that Ss who receive low scores on the R-S scale (repressers) exhibit greater disturbance than do those who receive high scores (sensitizers). Repressers reported a stronger tendency to avoid thinking about impending shock (suppression) than did sensitizers. This reported tendency to use suppression techniques was directly and significantly related to basal skin conductance, non-specific GSR activity, magnitude of anticipatory GSR activity, and the number of sec. by which this activity preceded shock. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of sex guilt, repression, sexual "arousability," and sexual experience on female sexual arousal during erotica and fantasy.

Hypothesized that, among women who were asked to fantasize about sex, erotic preexposure would facilitate arousal during the fantasy, and arousal would be greater among those who had less sex guilt, those who were more arousable, those who were more experienced, and sensitizers. 62 female Ss (aged 18–53 yrs) were randomly assigned to view either an erotic or a nonerotic videotape. All Ss then imagined and wrote out a sexual fantasy. Sexual arousal was measured subjectively by self-report ratings and physiologically by continuous vaginal photoplethysmograph recording. Ss high in sex guilt reported less arousal but showed significantly greater physiological arousal during the erotic videotape than did Ss low in sex guilt. For the high sex-guilt Ss, the erotic videotape facilitated physiological arousal during fantasy. Ss low in sexual arousability and low in sexual experience followed a similar pattern. No significant differences were found for repression-sensitization. Results point toward a pattern of behavioral inhibition that facilitates increased response to forbidden erotica. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why do people need self-esteem? Converging evidence that self-esteem serves an anxiety-buffering function.

Three studies were conducted to assess the proposition that self-esteem serves an anxiety-buffering function. In Study 1, it was hypothesized that raising self-esteem would reduce anxiety in response to vivid images of death. In support of this hypothesis, Ss who received positive personality feedback reported less anxiety in response to a video about death than did neutral feedback Ss. In Studies 2 and 3, it was hypothesized that increasing self-esteem would reduce anxiety among individuals anticipating painful shock. Consistent with this hypothesis, both success and positive personality feedback reduced Ss' physiological arousal in response to subsequent threat of shock. Thus, converging evidence of an anxiety-buffering function of self-esteem was obtained. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The enhancing effects of anxiety on arousal in sexually dysfunctional and functional women.

Effects of anxiety on sexual arousal were examined to determine if sexually dysfunctional and functional women exhibit different patterns of physiological and subjective response. 32 Ss viewed 2 videotape conditions: an anxiety-evoking and neutral-control preexposure stimulus, each paired with a sexual arousal-evoking stimulus. Anxiety preexposure enhanced the rate and magnitude of genital arousal for both dysfunctional and functional Ss in relation to the neutral condition. Despite increased genital responses, both groups reported less subjective sexual arousal after anxiety preexposure. Functional Ss exhibited greater physiological but not subjective arousal than dysfunctional Ss in both conditions. Results are discussed in terms of desynchronous patterns of sexual response, mechanisms by which sympathetic activation enhances sexual arousal, and implications for treatment of sexual dysfunction in women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-verbalization and emotional arousal.

Investigated certain assumptions derived from A. Ellis' theory relating implicit verbalization to emotional arousal. Emotional responses (GSR and respiration changes) of 18 undergraduates instructed to silently read sequences of affectively loaded sentences were compared with those of 9 Ss who read neutral sentences. The relationship between relevance to S of the content of the sentences and level of emotional response was investigated, as was the effect of sentence type (observation, inference, or evaluative conclusion) on level of emotional response. Results were that Ss showed a significantly greater response to affectively loaded than to neutral sentences on 2 out of 3 responses measures. Neither relevance nor sentence type were found to have any significant effect. Results were interpreted as offering only partial support for the theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of anxiety level and psychological stress on verbal learning.

"It was predicted that under neutral conditions high anxiety (high drive) Ss would exhibit a performance superior to that of low anxiety (low drive) Ss on a paired-associate learning task with minimal intratask interference but that under conditions of psychological stress (report of inadequate prior performance) high anxiety Ss, due to the greater arousal of interfering extratask responses, would no longer exhibit the superiority found under neutral conditions. Results indicated that while the high anxiety Ss under neutral instructions were significantly superior to the low anxious, as predicted, and the Ss operating under stress were inferior to their neutral controls, the predicted interaction between anxiety level and stress was not found." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Resource allocation in on-line reading by younger and older adults.

Younger and older adults read a series of expository passages for immediate recall by self-pacing the presentation sector-by-sector on a computer screen. Regression analysis of sector reading times (RT) was used to estimate the time allocated by individuals to word-level (i.e., syllable length and mean word frequency), text-level (i.e., number of propositions, number of new concepts introduced, and total Yngve depth), and discourse-level (i.e., serial position) features. Age differences were found in the pattern of reading time allocation that engendered high levels of recall. Specifically, younger adults who achieved high recall were more responsive to word frequency and the introduction of new concepts. By contrast, high recall among the old was related to a greater degree of on-line contextual facilitation (i.e., a steeper serial position effect). These data suggest that there is an age difference in how the allocation of resources at encoding optimizes subsequent memory performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Compliance and attitude change under conditions of differential social reinforcement.

12 Ss known to have positive attitudes toward the church, as measured by a modification of Thurstone's scale, were induced to read a strongly antichurch essay before 3-person audiences. Unknown to any of the Ss, 4 speakers addressed prochurch listeners, 4 read the speech to neutral groups, and 4 faced audiences composed of antichurch individuals. All of the groups then discussed the communication for 12 min. The speakers as a group showed a change in attitude toward the church consistent with the position taken by the comunication. This change toward a less favorable stand was found to come principally from those speakers who had discussed the speech with individuals who were either neutral or negatively disposed toward the church. The results are interpreted as supporting a reinforcement theory of attitude change in an induced compliance situation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective sexual arousal to films of masturbation.

A film of a male or female masturbating was viewed by 96 male and 102 female undergraduate volunteers. Following the film, Ss responded to 3 measures of subjective sexual arousal and to 7 measures of affective responses. Males reported the highest level of sexual arousal to the female film and the lowest level of arousal to the male film. Males who viewed the film of the male masturbating reported the most disgust, depression, guilt, and shame. Females were sexually aroused by both films. Women who masturbated more frequently reported more sexual arousal to the films than the other 3 groups. A measure of negative attitudes toward masturbation differentiated the sexual arousal and affective responses of Ss. Sex guilt (measured by the Sex Guilt subscale of the Mosher Forced-Choice Guilt Inventory) was related to negative affective responses to the films. Several interpretations of the meaning of the data are offered. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A test of reciprocal inhibition: are anxiety and sexual arousal in women mutually inhibitory?

Tested J. Wolpe's (1958) prediction that autonomic sexual and anxiety arousal states are mutually inhibitory. Using a new physiological measure of female sexual arousal (vaginal blood volume), changes in 7 sexually experienced Ss (mean age 27 yrs) were compared during erotic video stimulation following anxiety and control stimulus preexposure and during anxiety and control stimulation following erotic stimulus preexposure. Consistent with reciprocal inhibition theory, when Ss were sexually aroused by erotic preexposure, anxiety arousal inhibited sexual arousal more rapidly than did an attention control stimulus. However, contrary to reciprocal inhibition theory, Ss became more rapidly aroused sexually following anxiety preexposure than following neutral preexposure. In the case of heart rate, changes were compared during erotic and neutral stimulation following anxiety preexposure and during anxiety arousal following erotic and neutral preexposure. Consistent with the literature to date, there were no heart rate changes that could be attributed to differential preexposure. Taken together, the results do not support Wolpe's reciprocal inhibition theory but do suggest a context interpretation: The way in which sexual and anxiety arousal states interact with each other may depend on the context in which Ss perceive the stimuli that generate these respective arousal states. The clinical implications of the findings are discussed. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Offset control during recurrent 20% carbon dioxide-enriched air induction: Relation to individual difference variables.

Although control over aversive events maintains a central role in contemporary models of anxiety pathology, particularly panic disorder, there is little understanding about the emotional consequences of specific types of control processes. In the present study, offset control over 8 20% carbon dioxide-enriched air administrations was experimentally manipulated in a large nonclinical population (n?=?96) varying in anxiety sensitivity (high or low) and gender. Dependent measures included self-reported anxiety, affective reports of valence, arousal, emotional control, and physiological indices of heart rate and skin conductance. High anxiety-sensitive participants who lacked offset control reported significantly greater elevations in self-reported anxiety, emotional displeasure, arousal, and dyscontrol relative to their yoked counterparts with offset control. In contrast, low anxiety-sensitive individuals responded with similar levels of cognitive and affective distress regardless of the offset control manipulation. Although the provocation procedure reliably produced bodily arousal relative to baseline, at a physiological level of analysis, no significant differences emerged across conditions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sociability: Traits, settings, and interactions.

Sociability, measured behaviorally as verbal participation in an unstructured conversation, was expected to be greater for Ss who were affiliative and exhibitionistic but not defensive (traits); for "sociopetal" seating arrangements and for greater environment-elicited pleasure, arousal, and dominance (settings); and for interactions among and between these trait and setting measures. In a study with 60 undergraduates, sociability did increase with the traits of affiliativeness and exhibitionism, the setting variables of pleasure and arousal, 1 Person?×?Person interaction, and 1 Setting?×?Setting interaction. However, seating arrangements and 12 Person?×?Setting interactions were unrelated to sociability; assertions that Person?×?Setting interactions account for large portions of variance in behavior are unsupported. Instead, results suggest that more attention should be paid to the predictive utility of interactions among person measures and among setting measures. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"I knew it cold before the exam": A test of the anxiety-blockage hypothesis.

Following a midterm exam in an introductory psychology course, college students (N?=?189) were administered the same test items under nonevaluative conditions. The hypothesis that high-anxious individuals as compared with low-anxious individuals would retrieve a greater degree of information not previously available to them when they were assessed under reduced threat was only partially supported. However, easy-item performance provided some evidence for an interference phenomenon. An interaction indicated that previously blocked information became available only for those high-anxious students who had initially used effective study strategies. Path analysis confirmed the relative importance of anxiety phenomena to classroom test performance in a time-ordered causal network involving ability level, study effectiveness, and anxiety arousal. Results add credence to a recent interpretation of anxiety as a failure-of-self phenomenon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Eating in anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa: An application of the tripartite model of anxiety.

Investigated anxiety in 40 women before, during, and after eating, as well as during an earlier neutral activity. Ss were 10 restricting-anorexics, 10 bulimic-anorexics, 10 bulimic, and 10 normal-weight females. Anxiety was assessed by self-report (ratings of pleasure, arousal, and anxiety), psychophysiological indicators (heart rate and skin conductance), and food consumption measures. Controls reported little or no anxiety and ate almost all of the test meal. The eating-disordered Ss reported a high level of anxiety throughout the study. Bulimics and controls ate similar amounts, whereas the anorexics ate much less. Psychophysiological arousal during eating was high in all groups. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluating gene × psychological risk factor effects in the pathogenesis of anxiety: A new model approach.

The present study evaluated the singular and interactive effects of a functional polymorphism (variation) in the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) gene and a psychological trait (anxiety sensitivity [AS], i.e., fear of arousal symptoms) in predicting subjective and physiological responses to a 35% carbon dioxide (CO?) challenge in a community sample (N?=?72). Genotypes were divided into 2 groups in accord with prior research. Findings were partially supportive of the hypothesized risk model. These indicated that the Group L genotype (homozygous for the 1 allele), compared with the Group S genotype (homozygous for the s allele plus heterozygous individuals), predicted greater fearful response to the biological challenge. There was also an AS?×?Genotype interaction predicting heart rate variability (HRV) in response to the CO?, suggesting that high AS plus Group L status predicts decreased HRV. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)