Interpretation Bias In High And Low Trait Anxiety Military Personnel

Anxiety is a kind of emotionally defensive response,occurring when a person has a premonition of impending danger or threat before exposing to a stressor.Moderate anxiety can help improve productivity,however,excessive anxiety can be counteractive.Based on the cognitive theory,anxiety derives from unreasonable cognition.People with high anxiety will have negative interpretations of ambiguous information,which reversely result in the maintaining and continuity of anxiety.This cognitive character of highly anxious people is referred to interpretation bias,and it has gradually become one of the most popular topics of psychology with the popularity of interpreting bias modification training.With the speeding pace of modern life,anxiety disorder is increasingly prevalent and concerned among the general people as one of the most common psychological problems.However,researchers have found that the anxiety of military personnel,who confront with more pressure,is underestimated.Undoubtedly,the anxiety of military personnel not only affects themselves but also the security and stability of the army and the level of combat effectiveness.Therefore,more attention should be paid to the anxiety of military personnel.Previous studies of interpreting bias in China are mostly translated from abroad and slightly modified for the general people.Considering military personnel are a special group and have a special working and living environment,it is improper to utilize experimental materials directly from abroad or other domestic studies.Therefore,grounded on the actual life of military personnel at the grass-roots level,this study compiled suitable experimental materials for military subjects and used them to explore the characteristics of the interpretation bias among military personnel with anxiety in on-line interpretation stage and off-line interpretation stage,with the aim to provide support for relieving anxiety of military personnel through interpretation bias modification training.Objectives:1.Write ambiguous scenarios based on soldiers’ daily life.2.Analyze the characteristics of interpretation bias of soldiers with high and low trait anxiety,and explore the potential differences between self-related and other-related situations in on-line interpretation stage.3.Analyze the characteristics of interpretation bias and explore the potential differences between self-related and other-related situations in on-line interpretation stage.MethodsBefore the experimental research stage,the ambiguous scenarios based on soldiers’ daily life situations were finally accepted as the experimental materials by steps of consulting thesis,collecting materials from grassroots officers and soldiers,asking grassroots officers and soldiers to evaluate ambiguities,asking psychological professionals to evaluate ambiguities,and finally asking psychological experts to evaluate them.In the experimental research stage,soldiers were divided into high or low trait anxiety groups according to the scores of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.Subjects were asked to complete the on-line and off-line experiment successively.In the on-line phase,modified WSAP experimental paradigm were adopted to evaluate the interpretation bias by endorsement rate and reaction time of the subjects to different emotional faces.In the off-line experiment,the AST paradigm was used to evaluate the interpretation bias by the participants’ rating scores for the emotional valence of interpretation.The experiment was achieved by E-prime2.0 software,and the data were analyzed by SPSS21.0 statistical software.Results:1.Preparation of experimental materials:81 Ambiguous Scenarios based on soldiers’ daily life situations were prepared,with a range of ambiguity from 3.05 to 4.90.2.Results of the interpretation bias in the on-line experiment:In general,there was no difference in the endorsement rate between the soldiers with high trait anxiety and low trait anxiety when positive faces were presented,but the endorsement rate of the soldiers with high trait anxiety was significantly higher than that of the soldiers with low trait anxiety when negative faces were presented(F=5.878,P=0.018).In the low-anxiety group,the endorsement rate of positive faces was significantly higher than that of negative faces(F= 5.140,P=0.027),while in the high-anxiety group,the difference between positive faces and negative faces was not significant(F= 3.099,P=0.084).However,under self-related situation,the high anxiety group had significantly lower(F= 5.013,P=0.029)positive endorsement rate and higher negative endorsement rate(F= 7.150,P= 0.010)than the low anxiety group.Besides,in the low-anxiety group,the endorsement rate of positive faces was significantly higher than that of negative faces(F= 7.820,P= 0.007),while in the high-anxiety group the difference of endorsement rate of the positive and negative faces was not significant.In terms of reaction time,the low-anxiety group recognized positive faces faster and negative faces slower(F=8.951,P=0.004).The benign score of the group with high anxiety was significantly higher than that of the group with low anxiety(t=-2.217,P=0.031).3.Results of the interpretation bias in the off-line experiment:In terms of positive interpretation score,the high anxiety group was significantly lower than the low anxiety group(F=11.874,P=0.001).,while in terms of negative interpretation score,the high anxiety group was significantly higher than the low anxiety group(F=14.946,P<0.001).This difference exists in both self-related and non-self-related situations.Besides,the positive score related to others of soldiers with high anxiety was higher than that of self-relevance score(t=-2.262,P=0.033).Conclusion:1.Successfully collected ambiguous scenarios based on the daily life of soldiers2.In the on-line interpretation stage,high-trait anxious soldiers had a higher negative face endorsement rate than low-trait anxious soldiers when facing ambiguous scenarios,however,the significance only existed in self-related situations.There was no difference in positive and negative faces endorsement rate and response time in the high trait anxiety group,while positive endorsement rate was higher than negative faces and positive faces were faster recognized than negative faces significantly in the low trait anxiety group.3.In the stage of off-line interpretation,Soldiers with high trait anxiety have obvious negative interpretation bias,which exists in the consistency of both self and non-self-related scenarios.Moreover,the soldiers with high anxiety had more positive interpretation bias in non-self-related scenarios.