Anxiety Sensitivity
Psychology Today blog: Who We Are
by Steven Reiss, PhD
Why Relief Pitchers Don't Run Away
Imagine: The Chicago Cubs are playing the California Angels for their first ever World Series championship. Each team has won three games, and the series now hangs on who wins the seventh and final game. The Cubs are on the field with the score tied 3-3 with two outs and bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. The count to the batter is 3 balls and 2 strikes. If the next pitch is a ball, the Cubs will lose the game and the World Series; if it is a strike, they will get to play an extra inning. The manager signals to the bullpen to send in a relief pitcher to the throw what he hopes will be the final pitch of the inning. Millions of Chicagoans anxiously await the relief pitcher's arrival at the pitching mound. The tension is felt by nearly all participants and observers.
Since stress is unpleasant, why does the relief pitcher walk to the mound to throw the last pitch? Why not run away to reduce the stress? Psychologists have put forth two influential ideas - self-efficacy and anxiety sensitivity - to explain why the pitcher goes to the mound.
The construct of self-efficacy, proposed by Albert Bandura, implies that the pitcher has confidence he will strike out the batter. The pitcher, because he believes in his own mastery of the necessary skills, is imagining the glory of success, which greatly reduces the stress and worry from the possibility of failure.
Although mastery/ self-efficacy can help people overcome their fears, it is hard to believe that professional ball players do not understand the possibility of failure. Even self-confident pitchers must realize there is a very real chance they will throw a bad pitch and have to live with scorn and shame the rest of their lives. Self-efficacy may help self-confident people manage stress, but self-efficacy alone does not explain why people walk into stressful situations on an everyday basis.
In 1985 Richard McNally and I proposed the idea of anxiety sensitivity, which implies that relief pitchers walk into stressful situations because they know that stress is a temporary and usually harmless experience. Relief pitchers have "low" anxiety sensitivity.
In contrast, a small minority of people have "high" anxiety sensitivity, meaning they think stress is harmful to their health or well being and, thus, fear stress. These people interpret the symptoms of stress -- stomach butterflies, shaking, sweating, pounding heart, dry mouth -- as signs of an impending heart attack or mental illness. If a relief pitcher were to have high anxiety sensitivity, for example, he might fear fainting in front of the crowd and television audience. He might fear "choking" (let stress throw him off his game) when pitching under pressure.
Thus far more than 1,100 studies on anxiety sensitivity have been published and the questionnaire, called the "Anxiety Sensitivity Index," has been translated into many languages. Anxiety sensitivity is strongly associated with the occurrence, frequency, and intensity of panic attacks. Anxiety sensitivity also is associated with posttraumatic stress disorder and pain sensitivity. Since anxiety sensitivity is predictive of maladaptive reactions to stress, the construct has created new opportunities for prevention research, with some large scale studies underway now.
If you want to know who will have trouble coping with stress, it is more important to know what the person thinks will happen to him or her as a consequence of experiencing stress, than to know how much stress the person experiences. In other words, there are person-specific vulnerability factors in maladaptive reactions to stress. People with low anxiety sensitivity can handle a great deal of stress, whereas people with high anxiety sensitivity cannot handle much stress at all. Freud's "anxiety and defense" was too simple, because how much stress a person can handle has a lot to do with what how much the person fears stress itself.
In terms of the 16 human needs (see my blog of same name), both anxiety sensitivity and pain sensitivity fall under the need for tranquility, which predicts reactions to stress, danger, adventure, and risk. If you are the coach of an athletic team and you have several players with high tranquility, your team is very unlikely to reach its potential. Athletes need low tranquility in order to perform well under stress.
Steven Reiss, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at The Ohio State University and author of The Normal Personality: A New Way of Thinking About People (2009).
Related articles:
Fear of Fear Itself
http://forum.psychlinks.ca/anxiety-and-stress/8207-environmental-factors-in-anxiety-disorders.html
http://forum.psychlinks.ca/psycholo...lth/19865-understanding-the-anxious-mind.html
Psychology Today blog: Who We Are
by Steven Reiss, PhD
Why Relief Pitchers Don't Run Away
Imagine: The Chicago Cubs are playing the California Angels for their first ever World Series championship. Each team has won three games, and the series now hangs on who wins the seventh and final game. The Cubs are on the field with the score tied 3-3 with two outs and bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. The count to the batter is 3 balls and 2 strikes. If the next pitch is a ball, the Cubs will lose the game and the World Series; if it is a strike, they will get to play an extra inning. The manager signals to the bullpen to send in a relief pitcher to the throw what he hopes will be the final pitch of the inning. Millions of Chicagoans anxiously await the relief pitcher's arrival at the pitching mound. The tension is felt by nearly all participants and observers.
Since stress is unpleasant, why does the relief pitcher walk to the mound to throw the last pitch? Why not run away to reduce the stress? Psychologists have put forth two influential ideas - self-efficacy and anxiety sensitivity - to explain why the pitcher goes to the mound.
The construct of self-efficacy, proposed by Albert Bandura, implies that the pitcher has confidence he will strike out the batter. The pitcher, because he believes in his own mastery of the necessary skills, is imagining the glory of success, which greatly reduces the stress and worry from the possibility of failure.
Although mastery/ self-efficacy can help people overcome their fears, it is hard to believe that professional ball players do not understand the possibility of failure. Even self-confident pitchers must realize there is a very real chance they will throw a bad pitch and have to live with scorn and shame the rest of their lives. Self-efficacy may help self-confident people manage stress, but self-efficacy alone does not explain why people walk into stressful situations on an everyday basis.
In 1985 Richard McNally and I proposed the idea of anxiety sensitivity, which implies that relief pitchers walk into stressful situations because they know that stress is a temporary and usually harmless experience. Relief pitchers have "low" anxiety sensitivity.
In contrast, a small minority of people have "high" anxiety sensitivity, meaning they think stress is harmful to their health or well being and, thus, fear stress. These people interpret the symptoms of stress -- stomach butterflies, shaking, sweating, pounding heart, dry mouth -- as signs of an impending heart attack or mental illness. If a relief pitcher were to have high anxiety sensitivity, for example, he might fear fainting in front of the crowd and television audience. He might fear "choking" (let stress throw him off his game) when pitching under pressure.
Thus far more than 1,100 studies on anxiety sensitivity have been published and the questionnaire, called the "Anxiety Sensitivity Index," has been translated into many languages. Anxiety sensitivity is strongly associated with the occurrence, frequency, and intensity of panic attacks. Anxiety sensitivity also is associated with posttraumatic stress disorder and pain sensitivity. Since anxiety sensitivity is predictive of maladaptive reactions to stress, the construct has created new opportunities for prevention research, with some large scale studies underway now.
If you want to know who will have trouble coping with stress, it is more important to know what the person thinks will happen to him or her as a consequence of experiencing stress, than to know how much stress the person experiences. In other words, there are person-specific vulnerability factors in maladaptive reactions to stress. People with low anxiety sensitivity can handle a great deal of stress, whereas people with high anxiety sensitivity cannot handle much stress at all. Freud's "anxiety and defense" was too simple, because how much stress a person can handle has a lot to do with what how much the person fears stress itself.
In terms of the 16 human needs (see my blog of same name), both anxiety sensitivity and pain sensitivity fall under the need for tranquility, which predicts reactions to stress, danger, adventure, and risk. If you are the coach of an athletic team and you have several players with high tranquility, your team is very unlikely to reach its potential. Athletes need low tranquility in order to perform well under stress.
Steven Reiss, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at The Ohio State University and author of The Normal Personality: A New Way of Thinking About People (2009).
Related articles:
Fear of Fear Itself
http://forum.psychlinks.ca/anxiety-and-stress/8207-environmental-factors-in-anxiety-disorders.html
http://forum.psychlinks.ca/psycholo...lth/19865-understanding-the-anxious-mind.html
