The relationship among guilt, dysphoria, anxiety and obsessions in a normal population

Seventy-six college students reported intrusive thoughts and impulses on a checklist. These students also completed questionnaires assessing depression, trait anxiety and perceived guilt. Results indicated for this normal population that intrusive thoughts were more distressful, more difficult to dismiss and occur with a greater variety of content compared to intrusive impulses. Multiple regression analysis showed that guilt was the best predictor of intrusive thoughts and impulses. Self-reported depression and anxiety were not strong predictors with respect to nonclinical obsessions and impulses. Discussion focuses on the utility of assessing guilt with obsessional disorders, the lack of a relationship between self-report trait anxiety and nonclinical obsessions, and the need to examine the relationship between guilt and anxiety with clinically obsessional subjects.     

BRIEF REPORT: Intrusive Thoughts and Intrusive Memories in a Nonclinical Sample

We investigated the relative frequency and aversiveness of intrusive thoughts and memories by eliciting the five most common of each in a mixed-sex nonclinical sample. Intrusive memories were a common phenomenon, although not as common as intrusive thoughts. When memories were elicited first, memories and thoughts were rated as equally pleasant, but thoughts were related as more unpleasant when they were elicited first. The most intrusive memory was associated more often with sadness and happiness, whereas the most intrusive thought was associated more often with fear.     

Effects of priming and suppression of worry

High and low worriers were primed by a short period of worry, suppression of worry, or the same period of non-worrying thought. Analysis of thoughts during the period following showed that worriers had more than twice as many unpleasant thoughts as did controls, across all prior conditions. Priming condition had little effect on this difference, although worry suppression was associated with a slight increase in the frequency of neutral or pleasant thoughts in high worriers, and a slight decrease in controls. These results are taken as evidence against the hypothesis that suppression of upsetting thoughts increases their intrusive quality, and thereby contributes to anxiety disorders.     

Intrusive and non‐intrusive memories in a non‐clinical sample: The effects of mood and affect on imagery vividness

We studied the number, valence, and vividness of intrusive and non‐intrusive memories in two groups (N = 20) of pre‐screened non‐depressed mood and depressed mood undergraduate participants. They were asked to generate as many intrusive memories (IMs) as possible from the prior 2 weeks, together with pleasant and unpleasant non‐intrusive memories from the same period. They subsequently formed images of these memories and rated them on measures of vividness, valence, arousal, and overall affect, while having their heart rate, skin conductance, and electromyogram monitored. IMs were common, with participants generating a mean of 1.15 pleasant IMs and 1.60 unpleasant IMs, and there was some evidence that they were mood‐congruent. IMs were more vivid than non‐intrusive memories, a difference not due to either valence or arousal. We conclude that IMs are a general feature of human memory rather than just a symptom of certain clinical disorders.     

Intrusive and non-intrusive memories in a non-clinical sample: the effects of mood and affect on imagery vividness

We studied the number, valence, and vividness of intrusive and non-intrusive memories in two groups (N = 20) of pre-screened non-depressed mood and depressed mood undergraduate participants. They were asked to generate as many intrusive memories (IMs) as possible from the prior 2 weeks, together with pleasant and unpleasant non-intrusive memories from the same period. They subsequently formed images of these memories and rated them on measures of vividness, valence, arousal, and overall affect, while having their heart rate, skin conductance, and electromyogram monitored. IMs were common, with participants generating a mean of 1.15 pleasant IMs and 1.60 unpleasant IMs, and there was some evidence that they were mood-congruent. IMs were more vivid than non-intrusive memories, a difference not due to either valence or arousal. We conclude that IMs are a general feature of human memory rather than just a symptom of certain clinical disorders.     

States-of-Mind in Psychopathology and Psychological Well-Being

This study investigated the states-of-mind model of depression, anxiety, anger, life satisfaction and happiness in four ways. Three hundred and ninety-eight undergraduate students from Singapore participated in this study. First, states-of-mind ratio and positive automatic thoughts were positively correlated with life satisfaction and happiness, and negatively correlated with anxiety, depression, and anger. In contrast, negative automatic thoughts were positively correlated with anxiety, depression, and anger, and negatively correlated with life satisfaction and happiness. Second, the BSOM categories based depression-related automatic thoughts was able to significantly differentiate among levels of depression, happiness, life satisfaction, anxiety, and anger in ANOVA and in terms of variance accounted for as indicated by partial Eta squared. Third, the BSOM ratio was the best predictor for happiness and life satisfaction and second best predictor for depression, anxiety, and anger in terms of variance accounted for as indicated by adjusted R², in comparison to the negative cognition model and positive cognition model. Fourth, both ANOVA results and multiple regression results showed that there is cognitive content-specificity for the BSOM based on depression-related automatic thoughts. Implications and limitations of these findings were discussed.     

Depressive, anxious and intrusive thoughts in psychiatric inpatients and outpatients.

A revised form of the Distressing Thoughts Questionnaire as well as standardized self-report measures of depression, anxiety and obsessionality were administered to a large sample of psychiatric inpatients, outpatients and non-clinical controls. A subsample of the clinical subjects completed the questionnaire battery after 3 months. Factor analysis identified three distinct dimensions of negative thinking which corresponded to anxious, depressive and intrusive thoughts. Further analysis revealed that the intrusive thoughts differed from the anxious and depressive negative automatic thoughts in terms of their reduced association with psychopathology, increased temporal stability and nonspecific association with negative affect in general. These findings suggest that by adopting a more specific focus on obsessive-like ego-dystonic intrusive thoughts, researchers will be in a better position to investigate the role of this phenomena in the development of clinical obsessions.     

Anxiety and watching the war in Ukraine

On 24 February 2022, Russia attacked Ukraine. Millions of people tuned into social media to watch the war. Media exposure to disasters and large-scale violence can precipitate anxiety resulting in intrusive thoughts. This research investigates factors related to anxiety while watching the war. Since the war began during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, threat from COVID-19 is seen as a predictor of anxiety when watching the war. A theoretical model is put forward where the outcome was anxiety when watching the war, and predictors were self-reported interference of watching the war with one's studies or work, gender, worry about the war, self-efficacy and coronavirus threat. Data were collected online with independent samples of university students from two European countries close to Ukraine, Germany (n = 348) and Finland (n = 228), who filled out an anonymous questionnaire. Path analysis was used to analyse the data. Findings showed that the model was an acceptable fit to the data in each sample, and standardised regression coefficients indicated that anxiety, when watching the war, increased with interference, war worry and coronavirus threat, and decreased with self-efficacy. Women reported more anxiety when watching the war than men. Implications of the results are discussed.     

Unpleasant and pleasant referential thinking: Relations with self-processing, paranoia, and other schizotypal traits

Referential thinking is the tendency to view innocuous stimuli as having a specific meaning for the self and is associated with personality traits and disorders. In three studies, this research examined the relations among referential thinking, self-processing, and paranoia. In Study 1, follow-up questions on the Referential Thinking Scale (Lenzenweger, Bennett, & Lilenfeld, 1997) revealed that referential thoughts are experienced as unpleasant and pleasant. In Study 2, unpleasant referential thinking was more strongly associated with paranoia and maladaptive self-processing and personality. CFAs in Studies 1 and 2 found that unpleasant and pleasant referential thinking loaded on different factors. In Study 3, a group of participants with elevated schizotypal personality reported more unpleasant and pleasant referential thoughts than a control group.     

A wandering mind is a less caring mind: Daily experience sampling during compassion meditation training

Mind wandering, or the tendency for attention to drift to task-irrelevant thoughts, has been associated with worse intra- and inter-personal functioning. Utilizing daily experience sampling with 51 adults during 9-weeks of a compassion meditation program, we examined effects on mind wandering (to neutral, pleasant, and unpleasant topics) and caring behaviors for oneself and others. Results indicated that compassion meditation decreased mind wandering to neutral topics and increased caring behaviors towards oneself. When collapsing across topics, mind wandering did not serve as an intermediary between the frequency of compassion meditation practice and caring behaviors, though mind wandering to pleasant and unpleasant topics was linked to both variables. A path analysis revealed that greater frequency of compassion meditation practice was related to reductions in mind wandering to unpleasant topics and increases in mind wandering to pleasant topics, both of which were related to increases in caring behaviors for oneself and others.     

Psychological adjustment in breast cancer: processes of emotional distress.

The process of psychological adjustment to breast cancer was examined at diagnosis and at 3- and 6-month follow-ups in a sample of 80 women with Stage I-Stage IV breast cancer. At diagnosis, symptoms of anxiety/depression were predicted by low dispositional optimism, and this path was partially mediated by use of emotion-focused disengagement coping. Younger age also was predictive of anxiety/depression symptoms at time of diagnosis, and this relationship was fully mediated by magnitude of intrusive thoughts. At 3 months, changes in anxiety/depression symptoms were predicted only by intrusive thoughts. At 6 months, low dispositional optimism reemerged as a significant predictor of changes in anxiety/depression and again was partially mediated by the use of emotion-focused disengagement coping. Independent effects for problem-focused engagement and disengagement and emotion-focused engagement coping were also found at 6 months. Implications of these data for psychosocial interventions with breast cancer patients are highlighted.     

Visual stimuli in distraction strategies for increasing pain tolerance

Recent experimental studies in pain control have questioned the value of pleasant affect in strategies employing distraction. It appears that pleasant affect may have been systematically confounded with task complexity or novelty in past research that found pleasant imagery or slides effective in increasing pain tolerance with the cold pressor test. The present study was a follow-up to a study conducted by this author (Greenstein, 1984) in which unpleasant slides had significantly increased pain tolerance above pleasant slide level. In the present study, 69 college students (35 females, 34 males) rated either the pleasant or unpleasant slides used in the original study on their perceived pleasantness, complexity, and uniqueness (novelty). Results indicated that the unpleasant slides were rated significantly more complex (P<0.001) and unique (P<0.001) than the pleasant slides. Additionally, as in the earlier study, ratings of the unpleasant slides on pleasantness deviated significantly farther from neutrality than did ratings of the pleasant slides (t=5.04,P<0.001). Thus the unpleasant slides were also perceived as being more significant (i.e., pertinent) than were the pleasant slides. The results indicate that affect was confounded with other stimulus characteristics in the Greenstein (1984) pain control study and probably in a significant number of other studies as well. Researchers are cautioned to control for the stimulus characteristics of visual distraction strategies used in pain control studies. The assumption that pleasantness,per se, contributes to strategy effectiveness is no longer tenable; future research must demonstrate an independent effect. Further, the implication that stimulus significance may increase the effectiveness of distraction strategies opens up a potentially fruitful avenue of research in pain control.     

Speech anxiety and rapid emotional reactions to angry and happy facial expressions

The aim was to explore whether people high as opposed to low in speech anxiety react with a more pronounced differential facial response when exposed to angry and happy facial stimuli. High and low fear participants were selected based on their scores on a fear of public speaking questionnaire. All participants were exposed to pictures of angry and happy faces while facial electromyographic (EMG) activity from the Corrugator supercilii and the Zygomaticus major muscle regions was recorded. Skin conductance responses (SCR), heart rate (HR) and ratings were also collected. Participants high as opposed to low in speech anxiety displayed a larger differential corrugator responding, indicating a larger negative emotional reaction, between angry and happy faces. They also reacted with a larger differential zygomatic responding, indicating a larger positive emotional reaction, between happy and angry faces. Consistent with the facial reaction patterns, the high fear group rated angry faces as more unpleasant and as expressing more disgust, and further rated happy faces as more pleasant. There were no differences in SCR or HR responding between high and low speech anxiety groups. The present results support the hypothesis that people high in speech anxiety are disposed to show an exaggerated sensitivity and facial responsiveness to social stimuli.     

Mood congruence in childhood and recent autobiographical memory

To improve upon previous methodology, participants in musically induced happy, sad, or neutral moods were asked to recall childhood and recent autobiographical memories in response to pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral word cues. Symmetrical mood-congruent memory effects were observed when events were rated from the perspective of when they actually occurred (i.e., then), because memories rated as being unpleasant then tended to be rated as more pleasant now. Finally, pleasant and unpleasant cue words facilitated retrieval of childhood memories more than did neutral cues. These findings suggest that symmetrical mood congruence can be observed when accounting for such factors as the valence of retrieval cues and the perspective from which experiences are rated, given that memories appear to undergo change in affective labelling.     

Understanding extraverts' enjoyment of social situations: the importance of pleasantness

Extraversion is a broad, multifaceted trait, yet researchers are still unsure of its defining characteristics. One possibility is that the essential feature of extraversion is the tendency to enjoy social situations. An alternative possibility is that extraversion represents sensitivity to rewards and the tendency to experience pleasant affect. In three studies, participants rated situations that varied on two dimensions: (a) whether they were social or nonsocial and (b) whether they were very pleasant, moderately pleasant, moderately unpleasant, or very unpleasant. Extraverts only rated social situations more positively than introverts did when the situations were pleasant, and extraverts also rated nonsocial situations more positively than introverts did if the situations were pleasant. Thus, the pleasantness of situations was more important than whether they were social or nonsocial in determining extraverts' and introverts' enjoyment.     

Individual differences in Pollyannaism

The Pollyanna Principle states that people process pleasant information more accurately and efficiently than less pleasant information. This study examined whether different measures of Pollyanna tendencies are correlated with each other. Fourteen measures of Pollyannaism were derived for 133 students. The results showed that subjects who rated themselves as optimistic or happy also showed Pollyannaism on other measures of happiness, believed that the events in their lives were pleasant, gave themselves positive ratings on personality characteristics, recalled pleasant words more often than unpleasant words, supplied more free associations to pleasant stimuli than to unpleasant stimuli, listed pleasant items first, and judged that pleasant words were more frequent in the English language.     

Reactions in Psychotherapy

The Pollyanna Principle states that people process pleasant information more accurately and efficiently than less pleasant information. This study examined whether different measures of Pollyanna tendencies are correlated with each other. Fourteen measures of Pollyannaism were derived for 133 students. The results showed that subjects who rated themselves as optimistic or happy also showed Pollyannaism on other measures of happiness, believed that the events in their lives were pleasant, gave themselves positive ratings on personality characteristics, recalled pleasant words more often than unpleasant words, supplied more free associations to pleasant stimuli than to unpleasant stimuli, listed pleasant items first, and judged that pleasant words were more frequent in the English language.     

Components of generalized anxiety: the role of intrusive thoughts vs worry

This study explored possible mechanisms involved with the maintenance of generalized anxiety. While several general anxiety-related variables were investigated, the relationship between worry and intrusive thoughts was of primary interest. We postulated that anxious persons continue to worry in order to avoid recollections of distressing life events. Accordingly, we hypothesized that worry can be distinguished from intrusive thoughts and that the experience of worry would be preferred to intrusive thoughts. Results of a factor analysis indicated that worry and intrusive thought items loaded on separate factors, which supports the hypothesis that worry can be distinguished from intrusive thoughts. The study also examined whether different patterns of worry and intrusive thoughts distinguish between high-anxious, panic, and low-anxious persons and how anxiety sensitivity and self-consciousness are related to generalized anxiety and panic. Finally, we discussed the implications of our results for understanding the psychopathology base of Generalized Anxiety Disorder.     

Perfectionism Cognitions, Rumination, and Psychological Distress

The current study examined the extent to which dimensions of perfectionism are associated with a ruminative response orientation and the experience of cognitive intrusions in response to stressful events. Our main goal was to test the hypothesis that individuals characterized by frequent automatic thoughts involving perfectionistic themes would also be characterized by a ruminative response orientation when distressed and they would report intrusive thoughts and images following the experience of a stressful event. A sample of 65 students completed several measures, including the Perfectionism Cognitions Inventory, the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale, the Response Styles Questionnaire, the Impact of Events Scale, and indices of depression and anxiety. Correlational analyses confirmed that high scores on the Perfectionism Cognitions Inventory were correlated with a ruminative response orientation and the reported experience of intrusive thoughts and images following the experience of a stressful event. High levels of perfectionism cognitions, socially prescribed perfectionism, and rumination were also correlated with measures of depression and anxiety representingthe tripartite model. The results support the view that there is a salient cognitive aspect to perfectionism and the experience of frequent perfectionistic cognitions and related forms of rumination contribute to levels of psychological distress.     

Self-reported problems: a comparison between PTSD-diagnosed veterans,their spouses,and clinicians

This study investigated self-reported problems in a sample of help-seeking Vietnam veterans, comparing the veteran's own view with clinician and spouse perspectives, with the aim of examining convergence in reports across different informants. Veterans with PTSD (N = 459) were asked to list and rate their five most serious problems. Spouses and treating clinicians completed the same questionnaire in relation to the veteran. Rates of endorsement for each problem area, and levels of agreement between raters, were calculated. Veterans, spouses, and clinicians were all likely to rate anger as a high priority, with veterans also likely to nominate anxiety and depression. Spouses were likely to nominate more observable behavioural problems such as interpersonal difficulties and avoidance, while clinicians were likely to nominate indications of psychopathology, such as anxiety, depression, and intrusive thoughts. Agreement across raters was generally high, although interpretation of agreement levels was complex.