Anxiety sensitivity (AS) refers to the fear of behaviours or sensations associated with the experience of
anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion which is characterized by an unpleasant state of inner turmoil and includes feelings of dread over anticipated events. Anxiety is different than fear in that the former is defined as the anticipation of a future threat wh ...
, and a misinterpretation of such sensations as dangerous. Bodily sensations related to anxiety, such as nausea and palpitations, are mistaken as harmful experiences, causing anxiety or
fear
Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear ...
to intensify.
For example, a person with high anxiety sensitivity may fear the shakes as impending neurological disorder, or may suspect lightheadedness is the result of a brain tumour; conversely, a person with low anxiety sensitivity is likely to identify these as harmless and attach no significance to them.
The Anxiety Sensitivity Index attempts to assess anxiety sensitivity.
Anxiety sensitivity (fear of anxiety-related sensations) is distinct from, although related to and associated with,
health anxiety (a key feature of which is heightened awareness of physical sensations, known as body vigilance).
Similarly, it is distinguished from general "trait anxiety" by a focus on physical (somatic) symptoms and sensations, as opposed to general
stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
.
History
In the 1970s and 1980s the
fear of fear was considered as an important consequence of
panic attack
Panic attacks are sudden periods of intense fear and discomfort that may include palpitations, sweating, chest pain or chest discomfort, shortness of breath, trembling, dizziness, numbness, confusion, or a feeling of impending doom or of losing ...
s. It was assumed that after a first panic attack, people learn to fear recurrence, and thus developed
agoraphobia.
In 1985 Reiss and McNally re-interpreted the "fear of fear" as anxiety sensitivity. Instead of viewing it as the anticipation of recurrent panic attacks, Reiss and McNally suggested that it arises from beliefs that the experience of anxiety is itself harmful. A person who believes that a pounding heart is a sign of impending cardiac trouble, for example, might show a fear of fear rooted in cognitive beliefs rather than in associative learning.
The concept of anxiety sensitivity expressed two ideas. First, it implied that the fear of fear is at least sometimes rooted in cognition or beliefs, not
Pavlovian
Classical conditioning (also known as Pavlovian or respondent conditioning) is a behavioral procedure in which a biologically potent stimulus (e.g. food) is paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. a triangle). It also refers to the learn ...
associations with prior panic experiences. Second, it implied that the fear of fear could precede panic experiences and even predict panic attacks,
post-traumatic stress
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that can develop because of exposure to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on a ...
,
phobias, and other anxiety conditions.
Anxiety Sensitivity Index
In 1984,
Steven Reiss wrote the 16 items on the brief questionnaire he called and copyrighted as the "Anxiety Sensitivity Index" (ASI). In 1986 Reiss, Peterson, Gursky, & McNally published the ASI questionnaire along with initial validity evidence. As of July, 2013, the ASI has been used in more than 1,600 research studies. As was predicted by Reiss and McNally (1985), a high score on the ASI is a powerful and unique predictor of who will have panic attacks, post-traumatic stress, and ordinary fears or phobias.
By helping researchers identify people with a high risk of panic disorder and other anxiety condition, the construct of anxiety sensitivity has created new research opportunities to study the prevention of disorders affecting more than five million Americans.
Harvard's Richard McNally, Florida State's Norman Schmidt, and University of Houston psychologist Michael Zvolensky published research that established the validity of anxiety sensitivity. George Washington University psychologist Rolf Peterson, and Yale's Wendy Silverman, extended the anxiety sensitivity concept to children.
When the ASI was first published, it was widely criticized as superfluous. It was thought that, since everybody avoids anxiety, there is no need to study individual differences. We now know, however, that while everybody avoids anxiety, some people go to much greater lengths than others to do so. These individuals are at risk for panic attacks, post-traumatic stress disorder, and phobias. These individuals also agree with the statement that the sensations and behaviours of anxiety are harmful or dangerous.
Steven Taylor and his colleagues published several variants of the original ASI, seeking to rectify limitations of the original ASI. Given the mounting evidence that anxiety sensitivity was not a unidimensional construct, as originally conceptualized by Reiss, Taylor and colleagues developed the ASI-3 in order to assess the basic dimensions of anxiety sensitivity: (1) fear of physical symptoms, (2) fear of cognitive symptoms, and (3) fear of publicly observable symptoms (Taylor et al., 2007). Each dimension predicts different types of
psychopathology (e.g., fear of physical symptoms is most closely associated with panic disorder). The analysis of the dimensions of anxiety sensitivity provides are more nuanced way of examining the relationship between specific types of anxiety sensitivity and specific types of psychopathology.
Reiss (2013) has expanded the concept of a "motivational sensitivity" into a comprehensive theory of human
motivation, known as the theory of 16 basic desires, or Reiss Motivation Profile. By definition, a "motivational sensitivity" is an individual difference in valuation of a goal common to everyone and deeply rooted in
human nature
Human nature is a concept that denotes the fundamental dispositions and characteristics—including ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—that humans are said to have naturally. The term is often used to denote the essence of humankind, or ...
. Everybody wants to be safe and avoid anxiety, for example, but people with high anxiety sensitivity place a significantly higher value on their
safety
Safety is the state of being "safe", the condition of being protected from harm or other danger. Safety can also refer to the control of recognized hazards in order to achieve an acceptable level of risk.
Meanings
There are two slightly dif ...
than does the average person. Reiss's model is based on research on the largest cross-cultural database of human motives ever collected. It identifies 16 motivational sensitivities, one of which is called need for
tranquility, which is the same as anxiety sensitivity.
References
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* {{cite journal , doi=10.1037/1040-3590.19.2.176 , title=Robust dimensions of anxiety sensitivity: Development and initial validation of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-3 , year=2007 , last1=Taylor , first1=S. , last2=Zvolensky , first2=M. J. , last3=Cox , first3=B. J. , last4=Deacon , first4=B. , last5=Heimberg , first5=R. G. , last6=Ledley , first6=D. R. , last7=Abramowitz , first7=J. S. , last8=Holaway , first8=R. M. , last9=Sandin , first9=B. , last10=Stewart , first10=S. H. , last11=Coles , first11=M. , last12=Eng , first12=W. , last13=Daly , first13=E. S. , last14=Arrindell , first14=W. A. , last15=Bouvard , first15=M. , last16=Cardenas , first16=S. J. , display-authors=1 , journal=Psychological Assessment , volume=19 , issue=2 , pages=176–188 , pmid=17563199
Anxiety