Emotional Experience in the Face of Stress: The Contribution of Attentional Bias to Negative Expectancy and Anxiety

People vary in their levels of anxiety vulnerability, and this could result from individual differences in underlying cognitive bias. Previous research has established that attentional bias to negative information about an upcoming stressor predicts the development of negative expectancies concerning this stressor, which in turn predict higher levels of anxiety vulnerability. The present study tested the hypothesis that negative attentional bias plays a causal role in this relationship. Participants (N = 71) were exposed to videos conveying negative and benign information concerning an upcoming stressor, in a task designed to induce either attentional bias towards or away from the negative information. This experimental manipulation was successful in creating two groups of participants who differed, as intended, in negative attentional bias. Consistent with the causal hypothesis under test, this experimental manipulation of attentional bias also resulted in a corresponding group difference in anxiety vulnerability, as indicated by level of subsequent state anxiety assessed proximal to the stressor. Moreover, also as predicted by this hypothesis, mediation analysis confirmed that the causal impact of the attentional bias manipulation on state anxiety was indirect, and was mediated by its direct causal impact on negative expectancy bias concerning the stressor. Thus, our findings support the hypothesis that attentional bias to negative information concerning upcoming stressors serves causally to elevate level of state anxiety experienced proximal to such stressors, by driving the development of negative expectancies about them. We discuss the ways in which these results advance theoretical understanding and consider their potential applied implications