Interactive Effects Of Trait Anxiety And State Anxiety On Decision-Making Confidence

Decision-making confidence refers to the individuals’ degree of confidence about the correctness and optimality of decision and confidence (Peterson&Pitz,1988)."Modeling Interaction Between Metacognition and Emotion" implies decision-making confidence is constraint by "neuroticism"(personality) and effected by anxiety (situational factors)(Hudlicka,2005)."Trait anxiety",which is an important dimension of the " neuroticism ", is a relatively stable personality reflecting individual’s predisposition to respond, and maybe it is one of the sources of individual differences in the decision-making confidence." State anxiety", which is a common sentiment in the daily life, is a transitory emotion characterized by physiological arousal and consciously perceived feeling of apprehension, dread, and tension. It changes with the environment, and is assumed to have effects on both decision process and decision confidence (Endler&Kocovski,2001). Previous studies focused on the effects of trait and state anxiety on cognitive processes, but paid less attention on the impact of decision confidence. In order to examine the sources of individual differences of the decision-making confidence and the general rules and characteristics by which situational factors affect decision confidence, we took both trait anxiety(personality factors) and state anxiety(situational factors) into consideration to study the mechanism of decision-making confidence and their interactions on it. Some researchers suggested that decision-making confidence is an important bridge linked cognition and emotion in decision-making processes. Therefore, studying the effects of trait and state anxiety on decision confidence is not only of high scientific value, but also of important practical significance to investigate the formation and treatment of anxiety disorder. We use perception discrimination task and trial by trial confidence estimation paradigm to study two issues:(1) Whether individuals with low, moderate, and high trait anxiety have stable individual differences in decision-making confidence;(2) After induced state anxiety, how the subjects’ decision-making confidence changes, notably, the subjects were with different trait anxiety. Accordingly, we held two experiments, the results are as follows:In the first experiment, we used "Trait Anxiety Inventory (T-AI)"to screen subjects, the classification criteria is:low (below36), moderate (38-43), high (over45points). Finally90students took in, with31(13men,18women) Low TA,30(13men,17women) moderate TA and29(11male,18female) high TA. The results show:(1) Individuals’trait anxiety does not determine the correct rate (F (2,87)=1.548, P=0.281>0.05);(2) excluding the effect of individuals’ initial state anxiety on decision confidence, trait anxiety produced nonlinear effects (a U-shaped curve) on it (F (2,86)=4.020, P=0.021<0.05), that is, individuals with moderate TA showed the lowest decision-making confidence, while the low and high ones yielded higher decision confidence through all the difficulty of the task. Further analysis revealed that only high TA subjects’decision confidence were significantly higher than the ones with moderate TA.(3)Compute the each group’s correlation between decision accuracy and decision confidence respectively. Results showed that only moderate TA group generated a significant positive correlation (r=0.611, p<0.001),the other two groups did not show any significant correlation (low:r=-0.211,p=0.256>0.05, high:r=0141, p=0.464>0.05). Regression analysis showed decision-making confidence interprets38%accuracy, while the other two groups explained much lower. The experimental results indicate that individuals with different trait anxiety existed stable differences in the assessment of decision-making confidence. Nevertheless, moderate TA group hold lower decision confidence than low&high group, they got higher confidence calibration.As the first experiment, the second one screened90students,29(13male,16female) low TA,33(16male,17female) moderate TA,28(14male,14female) high TA. Inducing state anxiety or not was a within-subject operation. The anxiety-induced method is:recollect the anxious events&complete stroop with interference. The control operation is:recollect the ordinary events&complete stroop without interference. Before and after the experimental and control operation, we used "State Anxiety Scale (S-Al)" to measure subjects’anxious level, the results showed that the experimental operation successfully induced state anxiety (F (1,87)=106.31, P<0.001), while the control operation does not change the anxious status (F (1,87)=0.147, P=0.701>0.05). After induced state anxiety, the three groups’perceived judgment and decision-making confidence changes as follows:(1) state anxiety affected the judgment process interacting with difficulty (F (2,87)=5.455, P=0.008<0.05), simple effect analysis found that anxiety increased the accuracy only in moderate difficult task;(2) taking the initial state anxiety as a covariate variant into ANOVA analysis, results showed trait anxiety and state anxiety had an interactive effect on decision-making confidence(F (2,86)=6.627, P=0.002<0.05),more specifically, after induced state anxiety, decision confidence got no change in low&moderate TA groups, but it increased a lot in high TA group.(3) Confidence of correct and incorrect decision was further analyzed to display the confidence resolution. After induced state anxiety, the confidence resolution didn’t change in low TA group, moderate TA group’s confidence of incorrect decreased, while high TA group’s both confidence of correct and incorrect increased, revealing some overconfidence. Overall, the effects of induced anxiety on decision process and decision-making confidence were separated; trait anxiety and state anxiety together produced an interactive effect on decision-making confidence.On the whole of the first and second experiments’ results, we can draw the following conclusions:(1) Individuals with moderate TA got high confidence calibration indicating a strong self-awareness.(2) the effects of induced anxiety on decision process and decision-making confidence were separated, which supported post-decision theory;(3) trait anxiety and state anxiety had an interactive effect on decision-making confidence. After induced anxiety, individuals with moderate TA estimated their decision confidence more cautiously becoming more aware of their errors; individuals with high TA expressed overconfidence systematically, which was an inappropriate coping method hindering corrective learning, and maybe it is one of the reason that people with high trait anxiety are susceptible to anxiety disorder. In a word, this study creatively combined personality and situational factors together to investigating decision confidence, which is an important supplement for the formation mechanism of decision-making confidence. From a clinical perspective, it sheds a light on the investigation of the formation and treatment of anxiety disorder.