Trait anxiety and prior exposure to non-stressful stimuli: effects on psychophysiological arousal and anxiety.

Arousal and anxiety responses to stressful stimulation are products of multiple factors that may include the physiological, behavioral, cognitive, affective, trait, and state components of our six-system model, as well as mediational and non-mediational perspectives. Within the context of this model, the present experiment examined the effects of prior exposure to neutral stimuli on arousal and anxiety responses to stress. High and low trait-anxious participants were randomly assigned to one of three prior exposure conditions in which they were exposed to stressful stimuli following exposure to: (a) neutral, non-stressful stimulation in the same modality (the Intramodality Prior Exposure or IPE experimental condition); (b) neutral stimuli in a different modality (the Cross-modality Prior Exposure or CPE control condition); or (c) a rest period (the Stress Only or SO control condition). Results showed that low trait anxious subjects had consistently larger arousal and anxiety responses to stress than did highs and that prior exposure to certain same-modality neutral stimuli reduced responses to subsequent stressors. In addition, arousal was greater in response to cognitive than to affective and in response to non-mediational than mediational conditions. Results are discussed in terms of the inverted-U arousal function and of the six-system model and its implications for understanding anxiety and arousal.

Anxiety and arousal: tests of a new six-system model.

The present experiment was a test of a new six-system model of anxiety, which includes physiological, behavioral, cognitive, affective, trait, and state components of anxiety and also differentiates between direct and mediated responses. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was used to screen 795 undergraduates at the University of Maryland. Of the 52 subjects chosen, half were high trait anxious and half low. The two groups were further divided into high and low situational stress conditions. Subjects in the high-stress condition were exposed to two types of stressful cognitive and two types of stressful affective tasks. Subjects in the low-stress condition were exposed to the same four tasks with the stressful aspect removed. Prior state anxiety and cognitive or affective sensitivity were also considered. It was found that the most influential factor in resultant arousal was situational stress. Trait anxiety, state anxiety, and cognitive vs. affective sensitivity also significantly influenced both direct and mediated physiological and subjective anxiety responses. In addition, rather than leading to increased arousal, as hypothesized, the presence of trait and state anxiety reduced arousal under certain conditions.