(PS9-B40) The Effects of Worry on Sustained Negative Emotion and Negative Emotional Contrast: Partial Support for the Contrast Avoidance Model of Worry

Worry, an uncontrollable and repetitive form of perseverative thought, is a core feature of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Many theories have tried to understand its emotional sequela and its maintenance of GAD. The contrast avoidance model posits that individuals with GAD may prefer to feel chronically distressed than experience a negative emotional shift or contrast, i.e., a shift from a positive or neutral state to a negative state. Thus, in this theory, worry serves to prevent a negative emotional shift by maintaining a static tone of negative affect. Though burgeoning evidence provides support for the contrast avoidance model, none of these studies have yet utilized an empirically validated measure to assess sustained negative emotion and negative emotional contrast, the two tenets of the theory. Also, most of the previous studies have mainly used undergraduate and/or non-clinical samples to examine the worry’s function in GAD. This study addresses previous study’s limitation by using a clinical sample of high worriers and empirically validated measure to study the contrast avoidance model.

Method:
Fifty participants (83% women; 72% white; 6% Hispanic/Latino; 2% gender minority; Mean(age): 27.3 years) with high trait worry completed a longitudinal study, where baseline and follow up measures of trait worry, depressive symptoms, sustained negative emotion and negative emotional contrast, as well as semi-structured diagnostic interviews data were collected. 92% of participants met diagnosis for GAD or one or more Axis 1 anxiety or mood disorder.

Results:

Consistent with the contrast avoidance model, multiple regression analysis revealed that trait worry was positively associated with sustained negative emotionality (p < 0.001) above and beyond depressive symptoms. However, higher trait worry was not associated with more endorsements of negative emotional contrast experiences (p = 0.21) above and beyond depressive symptoms.

Conclusion:
Although, our findings did not support the second tenet of the contrast avoidance model, more research with a larger sample is needed to disentangle the effects of worry’s role in maintaining negative emotionality and negative emotional contrasts. A limitation of this study is the restricted range of scores, which may have contributed to the failure to see a relationship in our second hypothesis. Future research should utilize repeated sampling methods such as ecological momentary assessments, which allows for the collection of data in real-time to examine how contrast avoidance processes unfold over time in daily life.