Testing associations between negative interpretation inflexibility, anxiety symptoms and intolerance of uncertainty

Abstract

Anxiety is a highly prevalent psychological problem. Transdiagnostic mechanisms such as intolerance of uncertainty and repetitive negative thinking (RNT) are associated with current and future anxiety. Both intolerance of uncertainty and RNT are themselves maintained by a more negative interpretation bias of ambiguous situations. Once negative interpretations have been generated, they might be amended when incongruent information comes to light. If an individual has interpretation inflexibility, they do not revise negative interpretations once generated. The relationship between interpretation inflexibility and general (non-social specific) anxiety has not been investigated. The current research examines how interpretation bias and interpretation inflexibility are related to intolerance of uncertainty and repetitive negative thinking in single-session online studies, using cognitive tasks to measure interpretation bias and inflexibility and self-report measurements of symptoms. Two experiments aimed to recruit people with a range of anxiety levels, Study 1 ended up recruiting a relatively low anxious sample (N = 120), but Study 2 (N = 120) recruited participants with full range of general anxiety scores. Significant relationships were found between interpretation bias and anxiety symptoms, repetitive negative thinking, and intolerance of uncertainty in Study 2 but not Study 1. Neither study found significant relationships with interpretation inflexibility. The findings suggest that interpretation inflexibility does not play the same role in maintaining general anxiety symptoms as it has been shown to in social anxiety, and that interpretation bias and inflexibility have unique relationships with cognitive factors related to general anxiety.

Keywords: Anxiety; Interpretation bias; Interpretation inflexibility; Intolerance of uncertainty; Repetitive negative thinking; Worry.