Abstract :
Anxious individuals selectively attend to
threatening information, and defensiveness may influence
the experience and expression of anxiety. Fifty-eight
undergraduates scoring high and low on measures of
anxiety and defensiveness viewed pleasant, neutral, and
unpleasant pictures. Acoustic startle probes were presented
60, 240, or 2,000 ms after picture onset. At 60 ms and
240 ms, repressors (low anxiety, high defensiveness)
showed weaker blinks during both pleasant and unpleasant
compared to neutral pictures, suggesting enhanced early
attention to affective stimuli, regardless of valence. At
2,000 ms, high-anxious but not low anxious participants
showed potentiated startle responses during unpleasant
compared to pleasant pictures. Although this result replicated
previous research on anxiety and valence modulation
of startle, exploratory analyses suggested that the valence
effect was restricted to trait anxious individuals tending
toward a defensive coping style. Across probe conditions,
defensiveness was associated with heightened startle
reactivity independent of self-reported anxiety and foreground
stimulus characteristics.
