Mechanisms of catastrophic worrying

Davey, Graham (2017). Mechanisms of catastrophic worrying. [Data Collection]. Colchester, Essex: Economic and Social Research Council. 10.5255/UKDA-SN-851072

Data description (abstract)

Chronic worrying is a feature of most anxiety-based mental health problems, and is characterised by perseveration and catastrophising of worries. One important question is why individuals with anxiety-based problems persevere with a worry bout for longer than non-worriers despite this increasing their distress. A number of personality factors have already been identified as characteristics of chronic worriers, and these include negative mood, poor problem-solving confidence, and an intolerance of uncertainty (a predisposition to react negatively to an uncertain event or situation). This research will investigate how these personality factors influence cognitive mechanisms to generate perseveration or catastrophisation of worrying. Studies will investigate how manipulating these personality factors affects: an individual's goal-setting strategies for worrying; that is, how they affect the kinds of implicit 'stop rules' that an individual adopts for terminating a worry bout; the type of information processing strategy that individuals adopt when in a worry bout; that is, whether they adopt a deliberate systematic approach to processing worry-relevant information, or whether they adopt a less effortful approach based on judgmental or heuristic rules. Such an endeavour will be a significant contributor to the development of therapeutic interventions for worry-based mental health problems.

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