Congratulations to Graduate student, Ali Tracy and her co-authors who published a paper titled, “The effect of Self-Referential Processing on Anxiety in Response to Naturalistic and Laboratory Stressors” in Cognition and Emotion!
Ali and her colleagues examined the association of self-referential processing with General Anxiety Disorder symptoms in response to a naturalistic stressor (Study 1) and with anxiety-tension in response to a laboratory stressor (Study 2). Greater negatively biased self-referential processing was associated with higher GAD symptoms at the start of university and greater reactivity to the laboratory stressor. In contrast, greater positively biased self-referential processing served as a protective factor associated with greater decline in symptoms over time. This study was the first to demonstrate that there are valence-specific effects of self-referential processing on anxiety, suggesting that self-referential processing may be relevant to GAD.
Read the full paper here.