ANXIETYWeek 9-10

FEM4105 Psychology of Personality & Human

DynamicsBS(PM)-PJJ

INSTRUCTOR:SITI NOR BINTI YAACOB, PhD.

sitinor@upm.edu.my/012-2841844

What is anxiety?*A psychological emotional state or reaction of

tension experienced by a person when encountered with certain stimulus.

*It consists of unpleasant feelings of tension, apprehension, nervousness and worry and activation of the autonomic nervous system.

*“Butterflies in the Stomach” (Seligman, Walker & Rosenhan, 2001), defined as physiological and psychological state that a person experienced.

*It is characterized by cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components, whereby combination of these components create a painful feelings that we associate as uneasiness, apprehension, or worry.

*Good to motivate but lead to disorder if excessive.

*Body prepares organism to deal with threat.

Physiological Sensations*Heart palpitations

*Nausea

*Chest pain

*Shortness of breath

*Stomach aches and headache

*Dryness of mouth

*Vertigo

*Irregularities in breathing

*Increase in heart rate and blood pressure

*Muscle tension (pale skin, sweating, trembling, pupillary dilation)

*Muscular-skeletal disturbances, e.g. restlessness, tremors, feelings of weakness

Blood pressure, heart rate increase

Sweating is increased

Bloodflow to the major muscle group is

increased

Immune and digestive system

functions are inhibited (fight/flight)

Anxiety occurs/end

Dimensions of Anxiety

*Physiological

*The sympathetic nervous system and other neurological and hormonal processes designed to help prepare your body to cope with threatening situations are activated.

*Cognitive

*When confronted with an anxiety-provoking situation, your ability to organize and recall information becomes impaired.

Dimensions of Anxiety

*Behavioral

*The presence of anxiety produces behavioral patterns characterized by awkwardness, defensiveness, and withdrawal.

*Manifest Anxiety Scale (MAS)

*The scale provides a measure of anxiety based on items assessing the three basic dimensions of anxiety.

Instruments to Measure Anxiety

*Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scales (MAS-Taylor, 1953)

*Cattell’s Trait and State Anxiety Measures (Cattell and Scheier, 1963)

*Affect Adjective Check List (AACL-Zuckerman and Lubin, 1965)

*SCL-90 Symptom Check List (SCL-90-Derogatis et al., 1973)

*Profile of Mood States (POMS-McNair et al, 1971)

Theoretical Viewpoints of Anxiety

*Psychodynamic Viewpoint

*Anxiety serves as a warning signal that unacceptable unconscious awareness.

*Learning Viewpoint

*Anxiety is a conditioned emotional response to a stimulus that signals the possibility of a danger to the individual.

*Drive Viewpoint

*Anxiety is a driving force that serves to increase the likelihood of a well-learned response being performed.

Theoretical Viewpoints of Anxiety

*Evolutionary Viewpoint

*Anxiety creates a state of emotional distress that serves to prompt a pattern of adaptation to a threat in order to maximize survival.

*Integrating the Viewpoints

*Anxiety is a signal of impending danger acquired by the process of conditioning that triggers action by the individual.

Types of AnxietySigmund Freud: 3 types

Reality anxiety Fear of real threats and dangers looming in the world.

Neurotic anxiety

Fear that the instinct will get out of control and cause the person to do something for which he/she will be punished.

Moral anxiety Fear of conscience or to be precise conscience stricken behavior. Superego makes guilty if contradict to moral code.

Spielberg (1956, 1988): 2 types

State anxiety

An emotional condition characterized by consciously perceiving feelings of tension, uneasiness nervousness and heightened activation of the autonomic nervous system.

Trait anxiety

Individual differences in tendency to perceive or appraise stressful situations as personally dangerous or threatening.

*State Anxiety. The type of transitory anxiety you normally experience when exposed to a threatening situation.

*A temporary increase in the level of anxiety occurs in response to situations perceived as potentially dangerous.

*Trait anxiety. A heightened level of anxiety characteristic of normal individuals who might be described as “anxious”.

*The “anxious individual” perceives many situations as threatening and responds to them with increased anxiety.

State and Trait Anxiety

State and Trait Anxiety

*State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). An objective self-report measure assessing both state anxiety and trait anxiety.

*Individuals can receive a score for both their current level of anxiety and their persistent level of anxiety.

The Assessment, Dynamics, and Overcoming of Test Anxiety*Assessment of Test Anxiety.

*Anxious reactions associated with stimuli and situations specifically related to taking tests, as a result of tests being perceived as a threat to the individual’s ego, are measured.

*Dynamics of High and Low Test-Anxiety Individuals.

*Individuals high and low in test anxiety differ in their behavioral, evaluative, and cognitive responses to the testing situation.

*Overcoming Test Anxiety.

*Overcoming test anxiety involves replacing self-defeating thoughts with more rational thinking during the testing situation, overlearning the test material, learning to relax and associating the testing situation with rewards.

The Classification and Explanation of Anxiety DisordersClassification of Anxiety Disorders

*Panic Disorder

*An acute, intense feeling of anxiety that can appear unexpectedly and serve to immobilize the individual.

*Unpredictable (anytime even during sleep) attacks accompanied by physiological manifestations, which last from minutes to hours

*Normally lives in fear, reluctant to be alone, far from medical aid

*Medical assessment for symptoms related to heart attack or other medical conditions is taken before diagnosis

*Generalized Anxiety Disorder

*A chronic and pervasive sense of uneasiness that can make everyday functioning difficult, but not impossible.

The Classification and Explanation of Anxiety Disorders*Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

*A psychiatric illness that can occur following a traumatic event, in which there is the threat of injury or death to the person or someone else.

*Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

*An obsession is the sense of anxiety that is created by the persistent occurrence of rather unacceptable thought that the individual fears may actually be executed.

*A compulsion is the sense of anxiety created by an uncontrollable urge to carry out repeatedly by a particular course of action.

*Phobic Disorder

*The sense of anxiety created by the unrealistic and excessive fear of being isolated in a public place, possible humiliation or a specific object.

The Classification and Explanation of Anxiety Disorders*Agoraphobia

*Avoidance of individual to be in an open or public places.

*An abnormal fear of being helpless in an embarrassing or inescapable situation.

*House bound for years, with resulting impairment of social or interpersonal relationship.

*Specific Phobias

*Persistent fear of objects or situations (stimulus).

*Social Phobias

*Persistent irrational fear of situations, whereby he/she is constantly being watched or judged by others (scrutinize), as in public speaking, eating or using public facilities.

The Classification and Explanation of Anxiety DisordersExplanation of Anxiety Disorders

*Psychodynamic Explanation

*result of unconscious conflicts that appear in the form of pathological behavior, such as the avoidance of certain objects or a constant sense of apprehension.

*Learning Explanation

*result of faulty learning involving inappropriate associations, such as pairing the sight of a snake with feelings of extreme uneasiness, or erroneous assumptions about the consequences of behavior, such as bad luck being avoided by walking around a ladder.

The Classification and Explanation of Anxiety Disorders*Cognitive Explanation

*result of individuals maintaining a set of thoughts and beliefs that serve to foster a sense of intense fear, such as overestimating the amount of fear associated with an object or situation, endorsing self-defeating or irrational beliefs, being overly sensitive to situational cues, misinterpreting bodily sensations, and espousing low self-efficacy expectations.

*Neurological Explanation

*result of an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain that creates increased levels of arousal. They can be treated by drugs that serve to reestablish the balance of neurotransmitters to regulate the level of emotional arousal.

The Application of Personality Psychology*Anxiety in Advertising

*A fear appeal is a form of advertising that utilizes anxiety as a means of motivating the consumer into action. Positive appeals emphasize how the use of the product will reduce the consumer’s anxiety, while negative appeals emphasize how failure to use the product will increase the consumer’s anxiety.

*The successful use of fear appeals involves an ad that creates a moderate level of anxiety, which is followed by a specific recommendation designed to reduce the consumer’s anxiety and reinforce acting upon the recommendation.

The Application of Personality Psychology

*Anxiety in Social Situation

*Shyness consists of an affective, cognitive, and behavioral component. Three types of shyness are public, private and socially anxious shyness. While the self-selected strategies employed by shy individuals to deal with their shyness seem to have limited utility, successfully overcoming shyness involves incorporating different strategies corresponding the three different dimensions of shyness.