The differential effects of inductions of worry, somatic anxiety, and depression on emotional experience

Abstract

One-hundred and twenty-eight subjects underwent inductions of emotions designed to elicit worrisome, depressed, somatically anxious, or neutral emotional states, and then they completed the Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist. Induction of worry was found to produce (a) moderate degrees of both anxiety and depression, (b) emotional profiles more highly correlated with those of depression and somatic anxiety than the correlation of depression and somatic anxiety profiles with each other, and (c) a subjective state containing no unique emotional features separate from that induced in depression and somatic anxiety. Whereas a discriminant function analysis correctly classified 70-85% of the subjects in the other three conditions, subjects who underwent the induction of worry were correctly classified at only chance level.