Gender differences in loss of psychological resources following experimentally-induced vicarious stress

The present research focuses on gender differences in resource loss, perceived threat, and negative affective reactions induced by experimental manipulation of vicarious stress. Israeli students (54.7% women) were randomly allocated to one of two conditions: (1) Threat Condition (n=98), in which participants were exposed to a video film depicting terror attacks and (2) Control Condition (n=30), in which participants viewed a video film depicting a series of non-emotive news broadcasts. Participants also completed measures of mastery, optimism, and self-esteem. The data indicated that whereas under the Threat Condition women scored lower on psychological resources and higher on perceived threat than men, no significant gender differences were observed under the Control Condition. A path analysis revealed that gender was directly related to perceived threat and resource loss, which, in turn, were related to negative affect. In addition, a greater sense of mastery was related to lower resource loss. Overall, these experimental findings suggest that gender and mastery bear prominent effects on cognitive and emotional reactions to vicarious life threat.     

Gender differences in loss of psychological resources following experimentally-induced vicarious stress

Abstract

The present research focuses on gender differences in resource loss, perceived threat, and negative affective reactions induced by experimental manipulation of vicarious stress. Israeli students (54.7% women) were randomly allocated to one of two conditions: (1) Threat Condition (n=98), in which participants were exposed to a video film depicting terror attacks and (2) Control Condition (n=30), in which participants viewed a video film depicting a series of non-emotive news broadcasts. Participants also completed measures of mastery, optimism, and self-esteem. The data indicated that whereas under the Threat Condition women scored lower on psychological resources and higher on perceived threat than men, no significant gender differences were observed under the Control Condition. A path analysis revealed that gender was directly related to perceived threat and resource loss, which, in turn, were related to negative affect. In addition, a greater sense of mastery was related to lower resource loss. Overall, these experimental findings suggest that gender and mastery bear prominent effects on cognitive and emotional reactions to vicarious life threat.     

The effect of induced anxiety on cognition: threat of shock enhances aversive processing in healthy individuals

Individuals with anxiety disorders demonstrate altered cognitive performance including (1) cognitive biases towards negative stimuli (affective biases) and (2) increased cognitive rigidity (e.g., impaired conflict adaptation) on affective Stroop tasks. Threat of electric shock is frequently used to induce anxiety in healthy individuals, but the extent to which this manipulation mimics the cognitive impairment seen in anxiety disorders is unclear. In this study, 31 healthy individuals completed an affective Stroop task under safe and threat-of-shock conditions. We showed that threat (1) enhanced aversive processing and abolished a positive affective bias but (2) had no effect on conflict adaptation. Threat of shock thus partially models the effects of anxiety disorders on affective Stroop tasks. We suggest that the affective state of anxiety—which is common to both threat and anxiety disorders—modulates the neural inhibition of subcortical aversive processing, whilst pathologies unique to anxiety disorders modulate conflict adaptation.     

Anxiety,aspirations, and self-concept in the achievement process: A longitudinal model with latent variables

Recent research suggests that anxiety is not a single, unified reaction to perceived threat, but rather a cluster of interrelated factors whose relationships to performance change as the individual progresses from one test event to another. This study investigated the presumed linkages between traitlike predispositions to perceive threat and achievement performance, as mediated by statelike anxiety arousal on a longitudinal basis (Perceived Threat Anxiety Arousal Impaired Performance). College students were administered self-report questionnaire measures during a preenrollment period, after the first two midterms, and following the last two midterms in a general psychology course. Four performance measures and 26 motivational indicators were fitted to a 10-factor latent model using LISREL model-fitting techniques. Path-analytic interpretations of this structural model provided little evidence for the commonly held view that traitlike threat perceptions mediate performance via statelike anxiety reactions. Far more promising, theoretically, are those influences on test performance stemming from the self-attributional, cognitive domain. Overall, the findings support a recent reinterpretation of achievement anxiety as stemming from the disruptive effects of diminished ability perceptions (and hence, impaired personal worth), rather than from the interfering influence of diffused emotional arousalper se.     

Assessment of death attitudes: an empirical approach

The Threat Index and the Death Anxiety Scale were administered to 228 subjects. Based on the high/low criterion scores, 105 subjects were assigned to the following four groups: (a) high death threat/high death anxiety, (b) high death threat/low death anxiety, (c) low death threat/high death anxiety, and (d) low death threat/low death anxiety. During the experimental phase of the study, subjects viewed a filmstrip on death rituals in various cultures. A recall test was then administered. Results indicated no significant group differences on recall performance. Initial no-show rates for the second part of the experiment were observed in the four groups reflecting a significant negative relationship between death anxiety and initial no-show rates. The possibility of defensive responding on the Death Anxiety Scale was suggested.     

Stereotype threat: the moderating role of Locus of Control beliefs

The goal of the present study was to test the moderating role of Locus of Control beliefs on performance deficits typically associated with stereotype threat. The results from Experiment 1 were consistent with predictions. First, consistent with the Stereotype Threat model, participants showed a decrease in performance when the task was perceived as a potential test of the in‐group's negative stereotype (lacking logical mathematical intelligence in the case of women and lacking social intelligence in the case of men). Most important, participants' Locus of Control beliefs were found to moderate participants' vulnerability to stereotype threat: individuals with an Internal Locus of Control, although generally performing better, showed a sharper decrease in the stereotype threat condition compared to individuals with External Locus of Control beliefs. Experiment 2 replicated the results from Experiment 1. Findings are discussed in relation to the psychological characteristics of Internal Locus of Control that may render individuals more vulnerable to the negative effects of stereotype threat. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mentioning Menstruation: A Stereotype Threat that Diminishes Cognition?

To investigate menstruation as a stereotype threat that could have the effect of diminishing cognitive performance, 92 undergraduate women from a small, urban university in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States (US) completed two cognitive tasks, a Stroop test, and an SAT-based mathematics test, as well as a Menstrual History Questionnaire (MH) and the Menstrual Attitudes Questionnaire (Brooks-Gunn and Ruble 1980). The MH served as the menstruation stereotype threat. Some women were also presented with positive information about menstruation, which served as the positive prime. The order of materials varied to yield four conditions: Menstruation Threat/No Positive Prime—MH first, then cognitive tasks; Menstruation Threat/Positive Prime—MH first, then positive information, then cognitive tests; Positive Prime/No Menstruation Threat—positive information first, then cognitive tasks, then MH; and No Positive Prime/No Menstruation Threat—cognitive tests first, then MH. In all four conditions, participants completed the Menstrual Attitudes Questionnaire last. Results indicated that participants receiving the Menstruation Threat completed significantly fewer items on the Stroop test. In addition, subjects in the No Positive Prime/Menstruation Threat condition performed more poorly on the Stroop the closer they were to their next period. This effect was absent for the Positive Prime/Menstruation Threat condition and reversed for participants in the Positive Prime/No Menstruation Threat. This suggests that positive priming moderates the relationship between closeness to menstruation and cognitive performance. Implications of the results for addressing stigma associated with menstruation are discussed.     

Attentional bias in high- and low-anxious individuals: Evidence for threat-induced effects on engagement and disengagement

Attentional bias to threatening visual stimuli (words or pictures) is commonly present in anxious individuals, but not in non-anxious people. There is evidence to show that attentional bias to threat can be induced in all individuals when threat is imposed by threat not of symbolic nature, but by cues that predict aversive stimulation (loud noise or electric shock). However, it is not known whether attentional bias in such situations is still influenced by individual differences in anxiety. This question was addressed in two experiments using a spatial cuing task in which visual cues predicted the occurrence of an aversive event consisting of a loud human scream. Speeded attentional engagement to threat cues was positively correlated with trait anxiety in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 showed that speeded attentional engagement was present only in participants selected for high anxiety but not in low-anxious participants. In both experiments, slower disengagement from threat cues was found in all participants, irrespective of their trait anxiety levels.     

Attentional bias in high- and low-anxious individuals: evidence for threat-induced effects on engagement and disengagement

Attentional bias to threatening visual stimuli (words or pictures) is commonly present in anxious individuals, but not in non-anxious people. There is evidence to show that attentional bias to threat can be induced in all individuals when threat is imposed by threat not of symbolic nature, but by cues that predict aversive stimulation (loud noise or electric shock). However, it is not known whether attentional bias in such situations is still influenced by individual differences in anxiety. This question was addressed in two experiments using a spatial cuing task in which visual cues predicted the occurrence of an aversive event consisting of a loud human scream. Speeded attentional engagement to threat cues was positively correlated with trait anxiety in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 showed that speeded attentional engagement was present only in participants selected for high anxiety but not in low-anxious participants. In both experiments, slower disengagement from threat cues was found in all participants, irrespective of their trait anxiety levels.     

Selective processing of masked and unmasked verbal threat material in anxiety: Influence of an immediate acute stressor

Attentional biases for threat were investigated using a computerised version of the emotional Stroop task. The study examined the influence of state and trait anxiety by employing a student sample assigned to high trait anxious (HTA; n=32) or low trait anxious (LTA; n=32) groups on the basis of questionnaire scores, and state anxiety was manipulated within participants through the threat of electric shock. Threatening words that were either unrelated (e.g., cancer, danger) or related to the threat of shock (e.g., electrocute, shock) were presented to participants both within and outside of awareness. In the latter condition a backward masking procedure was used to prevent awareness and exposure thresholds between the target and mask were individually set for each participant. For unmasked trials the HTA group showed significant interference in colour naming for all threat words relative to control words when performing under the threat of shock, but not in the shock safe condition. For the masked trials, despite chance performance in being able to identify the lexical status of the items, HTA participants showed facilitated colour naming for all threat words relative to control items when performing under threat of shock, but this effect was not evident in the shock safe condition. Neither valence of the items nor the threat of shock influenced colour naming latencies in either exposure mode for the LTA group.     

Perceiver threat in social interactions with stigmatized others

The extent to which stigmatized interaction partners engender perceivers' threat reactions (i.e., stigma-threat hypothesis) was examined. Experiments 1 and 2 included the manipulation of stigma using facial birthmarks. Experiment 3 included manipulations of race and socioeconomic status. Threat responses were measured physiologically, behaviorally, and subjectively. Perceivers interacting with stigmatized partners exhibited cardiovascular reactivity consistent with threat and poorer performance compared with participants interacting with nonstigmatized partners, who exhibited challenge reactivity. In Experiment 3, intergroup contact moderated physiological reactivity such that participants who reported more contact with Black persons exhibited less physiological threat when interacting with them. These results support the stigma-threat hypothesis and suggest the utility of a biopsychosocial approach to the study of stigma and related constructs.     

Metacognitive illusions for auditory information: Effects on monitoring and control

Prior work has demonstrated that the perceptual features of visually presented stimuli can have a strong influence on predictions of memory performance, even when those features are unrelated to recall (Rhodes & Castel, 2008). The present study examined whether this finding would hold in an auditory domain and influence study-choice allocation. Participants listened to words that varied in volume, made judgments of learning (JOLs) for each item, and were then administered a test of free recall. In Experiment 1, we showed that JOLs were influenced by volume, with loud words given higher JOLs than quiet words, and that volume had no influence on recall, illustrating a metacognitive illusion based on auditory information. In Experiment 2, we extended these findings to control processes and showed that participants were more likely to choose to restudy quiet words than loud words. These findings indicate that highly accessible auditory information is integrated into JOLs and restudy choices, even when this information does not influence actual memory performance.     

Domain-specific and domain-general processes underlying metacognitive judgments

Metacognition and self-awareness are commonly assumed to operate as global capacities. However, there have been few attempts to test this assumption across multiple cognitive domains and metacognitive evaluations. Here, we assessed the covariance between “online” metacognitive processes, as measured by decision confidence judgments in the domains of perception and memory, and error awareness in the domain of attention to action. Previous research investigating metacognition across task domains have not matched stimulus characteristics across tasks raising the possibility that any differences in metacognitive accuracy may be influenced by local task properties. The current experiment measured metacognition in perceptual, memorial and attention tasks that were closely matched for stimulus characteristics. We found that metacognitive accuracy across the three tasks was dissociated suggesting that domain specific networks support an individual’s capacity for accurate metacognition. This finding was independent of objective performance, which was controlled using a staircase procedure. However, response times for metacognitive judgments and error awareness were associated suggesting that shared mechanisms determining how these meta-level evaluations unfold in time may underlie these different types of decision. In addition, the relationship between these laboratory measures of metacognition and reports of everyday functioning from participants and their significant others (informants) was investigated. We found that informant reports, but not self reports, predicted metacognitive accuracy on the perceptual task and participants who underreported cognitive difficulties relative to their informants also showed poorer metacognitive accuracy on the perceptual task. These results are discussed in the context of models of metacognitive regulation and neuropsychological evidence for dissociable metacognitive systems. The potential for the refinement of metacognitive assessment in clinical populations is also discussed.     

Negations in syllogistic reasoning: Evidence for a heuristic–analytic conflict

Research indicates that cognitive age differences can be influenced by metacognitive factors. This research has generally focused on simple memory tasks. Age differences in working memory (WM) performance are pronounced, but are typically attributed to basic cognitive deficits rather than metacognitive factors. However, WM performance can be influenced by strategic behaviour that might be driven by metacognitive monitoring. In the current project, we attempted to connect these lines of research by examining age differences in metacognitive WM monitoring and strategies. In Experiment 1, younger and older adult participants completed a computerized operation span task in conditions that either required or did not require monitoring reports. Participants in the monitoring condition predicted and postdicted global performance for each block and rated their responses following each trial within a block. In Experiment 2, participants also reported their trial-level strategic approach. In contrast to the age equivalence typically found for simple memory monitoring, results demonstrated age differences in WM monitoring accuracy. Overall age differences in strategy use were not found, but using effective strategies benefited older adults' performance more than younger adults'. Furthermore, age-related differences in the WM task appear to be mediated by the accuracy of performance monitoring.     

Test anxiety and metacognitive skillfulness: Availability versus production deficiencies

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role of metacognition in test anxiety. In two experiments, the metacognitive skillfulness of high vs. low test-anxious secondary school students was contrasted. Low test-anxious subjects exhibited a superior metacognitive skillfulness during math performance relative to high test-anxious subjects. Furthermore, differences in metacognitive skillfulness were performance related. In order to unravel causality in the relation between metacognition and test anxiety, two types of test-anxious students may be distinguished analogous to Naveh-Benjamin (1991). Type-1 students would lack metacognitive skills (availability deficiency), through which they experience failure and develop test anxiety. Type-2 students would experience task irrelevant thoughts, which causes cognitive interference with available metacognitive skills (production deficiency). Results of Study 1 reveal that metacognitive cueing may represent an adequate method for the identification of both types. Due to time-constraints, metacognitive cueing in Study 2 failed to do so.     

Anxiety‐induced performance catastrophes: Investigating effort required as an asymmetry factor

Two studies are reported that test the hypothesis that previous support for the cusp catastrophe model of anxiety and performance, and the hysteresis effect in particular, could have been due to a complex interaction between cognitive anxiety and effort required rather than between cognitive anxiety and physiological arousal. We used task difficulty to manipulate effort required in a letter transformation task. Experiment 1 (N=32) used high levels of trait anxiety together with a competitive environment to induce state anxiety. Experiment 2 (N=20) used a competitive environment with social pressure and ego threat instructions to induce high levels of worry. Both studies revealed significant three‐way interactions as hypothesized with follow‐up tests showing some support for the hysteresis hypothesis in Study 1, and strong support for the hysteresis hypothesis in Study 2. The findings support a processing efficiency theory explanation of anxiety‐induced performance catastrophes and indicate that two cusp catastrophe models of performance may exist; one that incorporates the interactive effects of cognitive anxiety and physiological arousal upon performance and the other that incorporates the interactive effects of cognitive anxiety and effort required upon performance.     

Excessive use of reminders: Metacognition and effort-minimisation in cognitive offloading

People often use external reminders to help remember delayed intentions. This is a form of “cognitive offloading”. Individuals sometimes offload more often than would be optimal (Gilbert et al., 2020). This bias has been linked to participants’ erroneous metacognitive underconfidence in their memory abilities. However, underconfidence is unlikely to fully explain the bias. An additional, previously-untested factor that may contribute to the offloading bias is a preference to avoid cognitive effort associated with remembering internally. The present Registered Report examined evidence for this hypothesis. One group of participants received payment contingent on their performance of the task (hypothesised to increase cognitive effort, and therefore reduce the bias towards offloading); another group received a flat payment for taking part, as in the earlier experiment. The offloading bias was significantly reduced (but not eliminated) in the rewarded group, suggesting that a preference to avoid cognitive effort influences cognitive offloading.     

Scared stiff: The influence of anxiety on the perception of action capabilities

Influences on the perception of affordances (i.e., opportunities for actions) have been primarily studied by manipulating the functional morphology of the body. However, affordances are not just determined by the functional morphology of the perceiver, but also by the physiological state of the perceiver. States of anxiety have been shown to lead to marked changes in individuals' physiological state and their behaviour. To assess the influence of emotional state on affordance perception, the perception of action capabilities in near space was examined after participants completed an anxiety-provoking task. Anxiety was induced immediately prior to tasks that assessed participants' perceived reaching ability in Experiment 1, grasping ability in Experiment 2, and the ability to pass their hands through apertures in Experiment 3. Results indicated that those participants who experienced changes in anxiety underestimated their reaching, grasping, and passing ability compared to non-anxious participants. In other words, anxious participants were more conservative in their estimations of their action capabilities. These results suggest that anxiety influences the perception for affordances in near space and are consistent with the notion that anxiety induces withdrawal behaviours.     

Scared stiff: The influence of anxiety on the perception of action capabilities

Influences on the perception of affordances (i.e., opportunities for actions) have been primarily studied by manipulating the functional morphology of the body. However, affordances are not just determined by the functional morphology of the perceiver, but also by the physiological state of the perceiver. States of anxiety have been shown to lead to marked changes in individuals’ physiological state and their behaviour. To assess the influence of emotional state on affordance perception, the perception of action capabilities in near space was examined after participants completed an anxiety-provoking task. Anxiety was induced immediately prior to tasks that assessed participants' perceived reaching ability in Experiment 1, grasping ability in Experiment 2, and the ability to pass their hands through apertures in Experiment 3. Results indicated that those participants who experienced changes in anxiety underestimated their reaching, grasping, and passing ability compared to non-anxious participants. In other words, anxious participants were more conservative in their estimations of their action capabilities. These results suggest that anxiety influences the perception for affordances in near space and are consistent with the notion that anxiety induces withdrawal behaviours.     

Impact of fearful expression on danger processing: The influence of the level of trait anxiety

Threat estimation is crucial for the adaptation of behavior to a dangerous situation. In anxiety, a bias to threat has been described as a core feature. Therefore, the sensitivity for threatening information in anxious individuals may have consequences for danger estimation. In this study, we used the affective priming paradigm to test the assumption that fearful expressions would facilitate danger detection in natural scenes in anxious individuals. Twenty-three high trait anxious individuals and 22 low trait anxious individuals participated in the study. They had to detect the potential threat of a target scene (neutral or threatening) following neutral or fearful face primes. High trait anxious participants detected threat more rapidly than low trait anxious participants, consistent with previous reports of emotional hypervigilance in anxiety. Furthermore, this effect was enhanced when the target scene followed a fearful expression: Only in anxious participants were reaction times shorter to detect danger following a fearful prime than a neutral prime. Our results tend to show that in anxiety, the hypervigilance to threat may be of an important value such as increasing the detection of a subsequent potential danger. Implication of attentional processes and attentional control is discussed.