Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA.
Department of Psychology, Korea University, 145 Anam-ro, Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, 02841, Korea.
Psychol Res. 2021 Mar;85(2):618-633. doi: 10.1007/s00426-020-01289-1. Epub 2020 Feb 3.
The current study aimed to investigate whether induced anxiety, as well as trait anxiety, would lead to the failure of the regulation of emotional conflict. To measure the regulation of emotional conflict, the congruency sequence effect (CSE), which is a reduced effect of task-irrelevant distractor after incongruent trials compared to congruent trials, was observed while participants performed an emotional conflict task. In Experiment 1, participants performed the task in a safe context and a threatening context where a couple of electric shocks were given randomly on two consecutive days. In Experiment 2, participants performed the same task in either a safe or threatening context to avoid a potential carryover effect of the threat. The CSE observed in the safe context disappeared in the threatening context as well as in participants with high-trait anxiety level even without the threat. The findings imply that induced anxiety causes a failure of cognitive control that engenders the CSE in emotional congruency tasks. Moreover, such failure driven by participants' trait anxiety level might be a potential predisposing factor leading to anxiety disorders. Overall, these results suggest that induced anxiety, as well as trait anxiety, has an adverse impact on the sequential modulation of emotional conflict.
本研究旨在探究诱发焦虑以及特质焦虑是否会导致情绪冲突调节失败。为了测量情绪冲突的调节，观察了情绪冲突任务中同时呈现的无关分心物的一致性序列效应（CSE），即在不一致试次条件下，无关分心物的影响小于一致试次条件下的影响。在实验 1 中，参与者在安全和威胁两种情境下完成任务，其中在连续两天的时间里，会随机给予参与者几次电击。在实验 2 中，参与者在安全或威胁情境下完成相同的任务，以避免威胁的潜在延续效应。在安全情境下观察到的 CSE 在威胁情境下以及在高特质焦虑水平的参与者中消失了，即使没有威胁。这些发现表明，诱发焦虑会导致认知控制失败，从而导致情绪一致任务中的 CSE。此外，参与者特质焦虑水平驱动的这种失败可能是导致焦虑障碍的潜在易感因素。总体而言，这些结果表明，诱发焦虑和特质焦虑都会对情绪冲突的序列调节产生不利影响。
