Michael Hock | Bamberg University (original) (raw)
Papers by Michael Hock
PLoS ONE, 2020
Individual differences in dispositional coping might influence how ambiguous situations involving... more Individual differences in dispositional coping might influence how ambiguous situations involving interactions of men and women are interpreted and remembered. Specifically, we hypothesized that women with a sensitive coping style actively maintain ambiguously threatening stimuli in their memory, showing so-called sensitive maintenance. As a prerequisite to investigate this hypothesis, two surveys (Studies 1 and 2; N = 151 and N = 252) were conducted to answer the questions whether fear of sexual assault is of relevance for young women in Germany and whether ambiguous (rather than only unambiguously threatening) situations are experienced to a significant extent. After confirming this for our target population, our main hypothesis was tested in Study 3 (N = 192) by combining tasks assessing the appraisal and the forgetting of nonthreatening, threatening, and ambiguous pictures showing interactions of men and women, and by varying the cognitive load during the retention interval. Whe...
Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, 2022
Examination of the Multidimensional Anxiety Inventory for Children and Adolescents (MAICA) in Cli... more Examination of the Multidimensional Anxiety Inventory for Children and Adolescents (MAICA) in Clinical Samples Questionnaires such as the Multidimensional Anxiety Inventory for Children and Adolescents (MAICA) provide a diagnostic approach to alert for anxiety-or depression-related problems. The aim is to examine the MAICA within two clinical samples. We first investigated whether children having anxiety-or depression-related problems (n = 94) scored higher on anxiety (i.e., emotionality and worry) and depression (i.e., dysthymia and low joy) than a non-clinical control group (n = 282). Then, we contrasted a clinical sample with other mental disorders unrelated to anxiety or depression (n = 45) with another non-clinical control group (n = 135). Across all scales of the MAICA, children with anxiety-or depression-related problems showed less favourable values than the non-clinical control group (d = 0.34 to 0.54 for anxiety, 0.55 to 0.68 for depression). Children with other mental problems showed no differences in either the anxiety or depression scales. For the use as a screening instrument, preliminary cutoff scores for identifying anxiety-or depression-related problems with the MAICA are given.
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences
Diagnostica
Zusammenfassung. Das allgemeine Modul des „Mehrdimensionalen Angstinventars für Kinder und Jugend... more Zusammenfassung. Das allgemeine Modul des „Mehrdimensionalen Angstinventars für Kinder und Jugendliche“ (MAI-KJ) dient der Messung von dispositioneller Angst (indiziert durch Aufgeregtheit und Besorgnis) und Depression (indiziert durch hohe Traurigkeit und niedrige Freude). Der Aufbau des Fragebogens wird vorgestellt. Überprüft werden Faktorenstruktur, psychometrische Eigenschaften und Validität des Verfahrens. Die Analysen basieren vorwiegend auf 2 Stichproben von Kindern und Jugendlichen der Klassenstufen 3 bis 10 (Stichprobe 1: N = 2 594, Stichprobe 2: N = 7 339). Die angenommene Struktur konnte mittels explorativer und konfirmatorischer Faktorenanalysen bestätigt werden. Struktur und Messeigenschaften des MAI-KJ waren weitgehend invariant gegenüber Geschlecht und Alter der Kinder. Die Reliabilitäten der Skalen fielen zufriedenstellend bis gut aus (Cronbachs α zwischen .70 und .88). Die Stabilitäten erwiesen sich als hoch (Korrelationen zwischen .61 und .76, Zeitabstand: 2 bis 4 ...
Diagnostica
Zusammenfassung. Das „Angstbewältigungsinventar für medizinische Situationen“ (ABI-MS) ist ein Si... more Zusammenfassung. Das „Angstbewältigungsinventar für medizinische Situationen“ (ABI-MS) ist ein Situations-Reaktions-Inventar, das habituelle Präferenzen für den Einsatz kognitiv vermeidender und vigilanter Bewältigungsstrategien in potenziell bedrohlichen medizinischen Kontexten messen soll. Im ABI-MS, das sich konzeptuell und methodisch an das Angstbewältigungs-Inventar (ABI; Krohne & Egloff, 1999 ) anlehnt, werden 4 Szenarien vorgegeben (Blutabnahme, Schnittwunde, Darmspiegelung und Narkose), in die sich die Personen hineinversetzen sollen. Zu jedem Szenario werden jeweils 4 kognitiv vermeidende und 4 vigilante Reaktionsoptionen gegeben, deren Zutreffen die Personen beurteilen. In der vorliegenden Untersuchung wurden Struktur und psychometrische Qualität des ABI-MS geprüft. Konfirmatorische Faktorenanalysen ( N = 2 131) auf der Basis des Zwei-Parameter Logistischen Item-Response-Modells bestätigen die Annahme zweier situationsübergreifender Faktoren der Angstbewältigung in medizin...
Frontiers in psychology, 2018
Weight bias toward obese youths is often accompanied by the experience of psychological stress in... more Weight bias toward obese youths is often accompanied by the experience of psychological stress in those affected. Therefore, the fear of being laughed at (i.e., gelotophobia) in overweight children and adolescents can be rather serious. In four explorative studies, the importance of relative weight, self-awareness of weight (incl. satisfaction with weight), experiences of teasing and ridicule, as well as the role of social-evaluative situations in school were analyzed with regard to gelotophobia. In two online interviews of adults with pronounced gelotophobia (Study I: 102 English-speaking participants, Study II: 22 German-speaking participants) relating to reasons they assumed for their development of gelotophobia, there was evidence of injurious appearance-related experiences during childhood and adolescence. In Study III (75 Swiss adolescents) associations between the experience of weight-related teasing and mockery with overweight, self-perceptions of weight, and gelotophobia we...
Cognition and Emotion, 2016
The differentiation of trait anxiety and depression in nonclinical and clinical populations is ad... more The differentiation of trait anxiety and depression in nonclinical and clinical populations is addressed. Following the tripartite model, it is assumed that anxiety and depression share a large portion of negative affectivity (NA), but differ with respect to bodily hyperarousal (specific to anxiety) and anhedonia (lack of positive affect; specific to depression). In contrast to the tripartite model, NA is subdivided into worry (characteristic for anxiety) and dysthymia (characteristic for depression), which leads to a four-variable model of anxiety and depression encompassing emotionality, worry, dysthymia, and anhedonia. Item-level confirmatory factor analyses and latent class cluster analysis based on a large nation-wide representative German sample (N = 3150) substantiate the construct validity of the model. Further evidence concerning convergent and discriminant validity with respect to related constructs is obtained in two smaller nonclinical and clinical samples. Factors influencing the association between components of anxiety and depression are discussed.
Psychologische Beitrage, 1987
Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace
The Bystander Intervention Model by Latané and Darley (1970) describes the stages necessary for a... more The Bystander Intervention Model by Latané and Darley (1970) describes the stages necessary for a bystander to intervene in an emergency and can be used to explain bystander behavior in the case of bullying. Social-cognitive and affective reactions to bullying such as empathy with the victim, moral disengagement, feelings of responsibility, defender self-efficacy and outcome expectancy are supposed to determine whether a bystander passes through all stages of the intervention model and are thereby crucial for the behavioral response. These mental reactions were compared between school bullying and cyberbullying in a sample of 486 German students (56% girls, age: M = 12.95) from 28 classes with a newly developed questionnaire covering the five Social-Cognitive and Affective Reactions to Bullying (SCARB) for school context and cyber context separately. Confirmatory factor analysis showed an acceptable fit and internal consistency coefficients were acceptable to good. In line with our ...
PLOS ONE, 2016
Although a large number of studies have pointed to the potential of emotional intelligence (EI) i... more Although a large number of studies have pointed to the potential of emotional intelligence (EI) in the context of personnel selection, research in real-life selection contexts is still scarce. The aim of the present study was to examine whether EI would predict Assessment Center (AC) ratings of job-relevant competencies in a sample of applicants for the position of a flight attendant. Applicants' ability to regulate emotions predicted performance in group exercises. However, there were inconsistent effects of applicants' ability to understand emotions: Whereas the ability to understand emotions had a positive effect on performance in interview and role play, the effect on performance in group exercises was negative. We suppose that the effect depends on task type and conclude that tests of emotional abilities should be used judiciously in personnel selection procedures.
[presents] two studies . . . aimed at testing hypotheses derived from the model of coping modes /... more [presents] two studies . . . aimed at testing hypotheses derived from the model of coping modes / these hypotheses concerned the effects of dispositional avoidance and vigilance on anxiety and attention in socially threatening situations study 1 aimed at assessing relationships between dispositional preferences (vigilance, cognitive avoidance), actual anxiety, and attentional orientation in an ambiguous situation involving different degrees of threat / [subjects were 44 female students] study 2 aimed at realizing an experimental situation which should allow certain aspects of aversiveness and ambiguity involved in threatening situations to be untangled / 88 male students served as subjects looking behavior is discussed as an indicator of attention orientation in socially threatening situations / special emphasis is given to the notion of a two-fold function of gaze: first, as an integral part of a person's "warning system" and, second, as an important "arousal reg...
Zeitschrift für experimentelle Psychologie : Organ der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie, 1998
This study examined the influence of dispositional coping strategies (cognitive avoidance, vigila... more This study examined the influence of dispositional coping strategies (cognitive avoidance, vigilance) on priming and memory effects of emotional stimuli. In the first phase of the study participants performed a lexical decision task that involved threat-related and neutral words. Subsequently, a previously unannounced recognition memory test for a subset of the words presented during the first phase was carried out. Repressers (i.e. individuals high in avoidance and low in vigilance) showed stronger emotional priming effects than nonavoiders. Repressers also showed a memory deficit for emotional relative to neutral words, whereas sensitizers (vigilance high, avoidance low) remembered emotional words comparatively well. Results raise the question of whether repressers' memory deficits for threat-related stimuli are actually based on a less differentiated network of emotional information, as assumed by recent theoretical accounts of individual differences in coping.
Personality and Individual Differences, 2003
This study examined the association of two widely used measures of attention allocation toward or... more This study examined the association of two widely used measures of attention allocation toward or away from threat-related stimuli: The emotional Stroop task and the attentional probe task. Fifty-three participants responded to computer versions of both tasks where stimuli were presented both subliminally and supraliminally. Thus, four indexes indicating attention allocation were computed for each participant. A correlation analysis showed that the attentional probe index and the emotional Stroop index were associated within each presentation mode while all other relations were nonsignificant. These results are discussed in terms of a distinction between preattentive and attentional processes operationalised by different stimulus presentation times. #
Personality and Individual Differences, 1993
ABSTRACT Coping dispositions (cognitive avoidance, vigilance) and actual anxiety (worry, emotiona... more ABSTRACT Coping dispositions (cognitive avoidance, vigilance) and actual anxiety (worry, emotionality) are investigated as determinants of the incidental learning of stimuli which are associated with the experience of success or failure. In a first trial of a laboratory study, 83 subjects (44 men and 39 women) had to solve 5-letter-anagrams of different degrees of difficulty within a period of 10 sec for each anagram. Interspersed in this sequence were unsolvable anagrams (“pseudo-anagrams”). For 50% of the 114 anagrams presented on a computer screen, the subject received feedback on the solvability of the item; for the remaining anagrams feedback was withheld. The central aim of the study was to analyze the recognition of success-related items (solved anagrams) as compared to failure-related items (unsolved but solvable anagrams with feedback). Furthermore, the recognition of pseudo-anagrams with no feedback concerning solvability (uncertainty items) was of interest. To this end, a second trial with a recognition test was carried out. In this trial, the subject was confronted with the anagrams of Trial 1 together with an equal number of new anagrams (distractors). The results yield person-specific relationships between actual anxiety and the recognition of success and failure items. For persons high in cognitive avoidance, anxiety was positively associated with the recognition of success items. No such relationship could be established for failure or uncertainty items. On the other hand, for individuals low in avoidance, anxiety was negatively associated with the recognition of unsolved anagrams.
Personality and Individual Differences, 2011
ABSTRACT This review treats individual differences in anxiety and coping from several perspective... more ABSTRACT This review treats individual differences in anxiety and coping from several perspectives. It starts with the argument that structural considerations (often linked to trait concepts) and processing considerations (often linked to situational demands and actual behavior) are not fundamentally in opposition, but that global and uncontextualized trait concepts (e.g., trait anxiety) require revision to incorporate cognitive–affective units such as appraisals, goals, or self-regulatory competencies (cf. Mischel, 2004). The article then presents a personality-oriented coping theory (the model of coping modes; MCM; Hock & Krohne, 2004; Krohne, 1993, 2003) which attempts to incorporate these units. The MCM distinguishes vigilant (uncertainty-oriented) and cognitively avoidant (arousal-oriented) coping processes and views them as dispositional preferences related to personality. Empirical evidence (based on cognitive-experimental designs in the fields of attentional orientation and the interpretation and retrieval of ambiguous and aversive information) is reviewed and supports central assumptions of the theory.
Journal of Research in Personality, 2008
The study investigated the influence of cognitive avoidance, positive affect, and gender on the e... more The study investigated the influence of cognitive avoidance, positive affect, and gender on the evaluation of and memory for threat-related information varying in degrees of aversiveness and ambiguity. Stimulus material consisted of threatening, nonthreatening, and ambiguous pictures. First, valence ratings of the stimuli were collected. This phase was followed by a first memory test. A second memory test was administered three days later. Memory for aversive information was influenced by cognitive avoidance, positive affect, and gender. Avoiders exhibited a comparatively good memory for aversive information in the first (immediate) test and a very poor memory in the delayed testing. A similar pattern was obtained for individuals high in positive affect. Compared to men, women gave more negative ratings to aversive and ambiguous pictures and had a better memory for ambiguous information in the immediate test. Results are discussed within the framework of the repressive discontinuity hypothesis proposed by Hock and Krohne . Coping with threat and memory for ambiguous information: Testing the repressive discontinuity hypothesis. Emotion, 4, 65-86].
Journal of personality and social psychology, 2012
Dispositional styles of coping with threat influence memory for threatening information. In parti... more Dispositional styles of coping with threat influence memory for threatening information. In particular, sensitizers excel over repressors in their memory for threatening information after long retention intervals, but not after short ones. We therefore suggested that sensitizers, but not repressors, employ active maintenance processes during the retention interval to selectively retain threatening material. Sensitive maintenance was studied in 2 experiments in which participants were briefly exposed to threatening and nonthreatening pictures (Experiment 1, N = 128) or words (Experiment 2, N = 145). Following, we administered unannounced recognition tests before and after an intervening task that generated either high or low cognitive load, assuming that high cognitive load would impede sensitizers' memory maintenance of threatening material. Supporting our hypotheses, the same pattern of results was obtained in both experiments: Under low cognitive load, sensitizers forgot less...
Emotion, 2004
Two studies examined the influence of coping dispositions (repression, sensitization, and nondefe... more Two studies examined the influence of coping dispositions (repression, sensitization, and nondefensiveness) and anxiety on the encoding and memory representation of ambiguous threat-related stimuli. In Study 1, memory was tested shortly after encoding. Study 2 contrasted immediate and delayed testing. Repressers showed evidence of "mixed" affective reactions to ambiguous stimuli at encoding, accompanied by weak memory representation of potentially threatening implications of these stimuli. In contrast, sensitizers and anxious individuals manifested a processing bias in favor of threatening implications of ambiguous stimuli. Influences of coping on memory were most pronounced for delayed testing. Anxiety influences on memory were weak. An expectancy-based account of individual differences in processing ambiguous stimuli is discussed.
PLoS ONE, 2020
Individual differences in dispositional coping might influence how ambiguous situations involving... more Individual differences in dispositional coping might influence how ambiguous situations involving interactions of men and women are interpreted and remembered. Specifically, we hypothesized that women with a sensitive coping style actively maintain ambiguously threatening stimuli in their memory, showing so-called sensitive maintenance. As a prerequisite to investigate this hypothesis, two surveys (Studies 1 and 2; N = 151 and N = 252) were conducted to answer the questions whether fear of sexual assault is of relevance for young women in Germany and whether ambiguous (rather than only unambiguously threatening) situations are experienced to a significant extent. After confirming this for our target population, our main hypothesis was tested in Study 3 (N = 192) by combining tasks assessing the appraisal and the forgetting of nonthreatening, threatening, and ambiguous pictures showing interactions of men and women, and by varying the cognitive load during the retention interval. Whe...
Praxis der Kinderpsychologie und Kinderpsychiatrie, 2022
Examination of the Multidimensional Anxiety Inventory for Children and Adolescents (MAICA) in Cli... more Examination of the Multidimensional Anxiety Inventory for Children and Adolescents (MAICA) in Clinical Samples Questionnaires such as the Multidimensional Anxiety Inventory for Children and Adolescents (MAICA) provide a diagnostic approach to alert for anxiety-or depression-related problems. The aim is to examine the MAICA within two clinical samples. We first investigated whether children having anxiety-or depression-related problems (n = 94) scored higher on anxiety (i.e., emotionality and worry) and depression (i.e., dysthymia and low joy) than a non-clinical control group (n = 282). Then, we contrasted a clinical sample with other mental disorders unrelated to anxiety or depression (n = 45) with another non-clinical control group (n = 135). Across all scales of the MAICA, children with anxiety-or depression-related problems showed less favourable values than the non-clinical control group (d = 0.34 to 0.54 for anxiety, 0.55 to 0.68 for depression). Children with other mental problems showed no differences in either the anxiety or depression scales. For the use as a screening instrument, preliminary cutoff scores for identifying anxiety-or depression-related problems with the MAICA are given.
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences
Diagnostica
Zusammenfassung. Das allgemeine Modul des „Mehrdimensionalen Angstinventars für Kinder und Jugend... more Zusammenfassung. Das allgemeine Modul des „Mehrdimensionalen Angstinventars für Kinder und Jugendliche“ (MAI-KJ) dient der Messung von dispositioneller Angst (indiziert durch Aufgeregtheit und Besorgnis) und Depression (indiziert durch hohe Traurigkeit und niedrige Freude). Der Aufbau des Fragebogens wird vorgestellt. Überprüft werden Faktorenstruktur, psychometrische Eigenschaften und Validität des Verfahrens. Die Analysen basieren vorwiegend auf 2 Stichproben von Kindern und Jugendlichen der Klassenstufen 3 bis 10 (Stichprobe 1: N = 2 594, Stichprobe 2: N = 7 339). Die angenommene Struktur konnte mittels explorativer und konfirmatorischer Faktorenanalysen bestätigt werden. Struktur und Messeigenschaften des MAI-KJ waren weitgehend invariant gegenüber Geschlecht und Alter der Kinder. Die Reliabilitäten der Skalen fielen zufriedenstellend bis gut aus (Cronbachs α zwischen .70 und .88). Die Stabilitäten erwiesen sich als hoch (Korrelationen zwischen .61 und .76, Zeitabstand: 2 bis 4 ...
Diagnostica
Zusammenfassung. Das „Angstbewältigungsinventar für medizinische Situationen“ (ABI-MS) ist ein Si... more Zusammenfassung. Das „Angstbewältigungsinventar für medizinische Situationen“ (ABI-MS) ist ein Situations-Reaktions-Inventar, das habituelle Präferenzen für den Einsatz kognitiv vermeidender und vigilanter Bewältigungsstrategien in potenziell bedrohlichen medizinischen Kontexten messen soll. Im ABI-MS, das sich konzeptuell und methodisch an das Angstbewältigungs-Inventar (ABI; Krohne & Egloff, 1999 ) anlehnt, werden 4 Szenarien vorgegeben (Blutabnahme, Schnittwunde, Darmspiegelung und Narkose), in die sich die Personen hineinversetzen sollen. Zu jedem Szenario werden jeweils 4 kognitiv vermeidende und 4 vigilante Reaktionsoptionen gegeben, deren Zutreffen die Personen beurteilen. In der vorliegenden Untersuchung wurden Struktur und psychometrische Qualität des ABI-MS geprüft. Konfirmatorische Faktorenanalysen ( N = 2 131) auf der Basis des Zwei-Parameter Logistischen Item-Response-Modells bestätigen die Annahme zweier situationsübergreifender Faktoren der Angstbewältigung in medizin...
Frontiers in psychology, 2018
Weight bias toward obese youths is often accompanied by the experience of psychological stress in... more Weight bias toward obese youths is often accompanied by the experience of psychological stress in those affected. Therefore, the fear of being laughed at (i.e., gelotophobia) in overweight children and adolescents can be rather serious. In four explorative studies, the importance of relative weight, self-awareness of weight (incl. satisfaction with weight), experiences of teasing and ridicule, as well as the role of social-evaluative situations in school were analyzed with regard to gelotophobia. In two online interviews of adults with pronounced gelotophobia (Study I: 102 English-speaking participants, Study II: 22 German-speaking participants) relating to reasons they assumed for their development of gelotophobia, there was evidence of injurious appearance-related experiences during childhood and adolescence. In Study III (75 Swiss adolescents) associations between the experience of weight-related teasing and mockery with overweight, self-perceptions of weight, and gelotophobia we...
Cognition and Emotion, 2016
The differentiation of trait anxiety and depression in nonclinical and clinical populations is ad... more The differentiation of trait anxiety and depression in nonclinical and clinical populations is addressed. Following the tripartite model, it is assumed that anxiety and depression share a large portion of negative affectivity (NA), but differ with respect to bodily hyperarousal (specific to anxiety) and anhedonia (lack of positive affect; specific to depression). In contrast to the tripartite model, NA is subdivided into worry (characteristic for anxiety) and dysthymia (characteristic for depression), which leads to a four-variable model of anxiety and depression encompassing emotionality, worry, dysthymia, and anhedonia. Item-level confirmatory factor analyses and latent class cluster analysis based on a large nation-wide representative German sample (N = 3150) substantiate the construct validity of the model. Further evidence concerning convergent and discriminant validity with respect to related constructs is obtained in two smaller nonclinical and clinical samples. Factors influencing the association between components of anxiety and depression are discussed.
Psychologische Beitrage, 1987
Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace
The Bystander Intervention Model by Latané and Darley (1970) describes the stages necessary for a... more The Bystander Intervention Model by Latané and Darley (1970) describes the stages necessary for a bystander to intervene in an emergency and can be used to explain bystander behavior in the case of bullying. Social-cognitive and affective reactions to bullying such as empathy with the victim, moral disengagement, feelings of responsibility, defender self-efficacy and outcome expectancy are supposed to determine whether a bystander passes through all stages of the intervention model and are thereby crucial for the behavioral response. These mental reactions were compared between school bullying and cyberbullying in a sample of 486 German students (56% girls, age: M = 12.95) from 28 classes with a newly developed questionnaire covering the five Social-Cognitive and Affective Reactions to Bullying (SCARB) for school context and cyber context separately. Confirmatory factor analysis showed an acceptable fit and internal consistency coefficients were acceptable to good. In line with our ...
PLOS ONE, 2016
Although a large number of studies have pointed to the potential of emotional intelligence (EI) i... more Although a large number of studies have pointed to the potential of emotional intelligence (EI) in the context of personnel selection, research in real-life selection contexts is still scarce. The aim of the present study was to examine whether EI would predict Assessment Center (AC) ratings of job-relevant competencies in a sample of applicants for the position of a flight attendant. Applicants' ability to regulate emotions predicted performance in group exercises. However, there were inconsistent effects of applicants' ability to understand emotions: Whereas the ability to understand emotions had a positive effect on performance in interview and role play, the effect on performance in group exercises was negative. We suppose that the effect depends on task type and conclude that tests of emotional abilities should be used judiciously in personnel selection procedures.
[presents] two studies . . . aimed at testing hypotheses derived from the model of coping modes /... more [presents] two studies . . . aimed at testing hypotheses derived from the model of coping modes / these hypotheses concerned the effects of dispositional avoidance and vigilance on anxiety and attention in socially threatening situations study 1 aimed at assessing relationships between dispositional preferences (vigilance, cognitive avoidance), actual anxiety, and attentional orientation in an ambiguous situation involving different degrees of threat / [subjects were 44 female students] study 2 aimed at realizing an experimental situation which should allow certain aspects of aversiveness and ambiguity involved in threatening situations to be untangled / 88 male students served as subjects looking behavior is discussed as an indicator of attention orientation in socially threatening situations / special emphasis is given to the notion of a two-fold function of gaze: first, as an integral part of a person's "warning system" and, second, as an important "arousal reg...
Zeitschrift für experimentelle Psychologie : Organ der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie, 1998
This study examined the influence of dispositional coping strategies (cognitive avoidance, vigila... more This study examined the influence of dispositional coping strategies (cognitive avoidance, vigilance) on priming and memory effects of emotional stimuli. In the first phase of the study participants performed a lexical decision task that involved threat-related and neutral words. Subsequently, a previously unannounced recognition memory test for a subset of the words presented during the first phase was carried out. Repressers (i.e. individuals high in avoidance and low in vigilance) showed stronger emotional priming effects than nonavoiders. Repressers also showed a memory deficit for emotional relative to neutral words, whereas sensitizers (vigilance high, avoidance low) remembered emotional words comparatively well. Results raise the question of whether repressers' memory deficits for threat-related stimuli are actually based on a less differentiated network of emotional information, as assumed by recent theoretical accounts of individual differences in coping.
Personality and Individual Differences, 2003
This study examined the association of two widely used measures of attention allocation toward or... more This study examined the association of two widely used measures of attention allocation toward or away from threat-related stimuli: The emotional Stroop task and the attentional probe task. Fifty-three participants responded to computer versions of both tasks where stimuli were presented both subliminally and supraliminally. Thus, four indexes indicating attention allocation were computed for each participant. A correlation analysis showed that the attentional probe index and the emotional Stroop index were associated within each presentation mode while all other relations were nonsignificant. These results are discussed in terms of a distinction between preattentive and attentional processes operationalised by different stimulus presentation times. #
Personality and Individual Differences, 1993
ABSTRACT Coping dispositions (cognitive avoidance, vigilance) and actual anxiety (worry, emotiona... more ABSTRACT Coping dispositions (cognitive avoidance, vigilance) and actual anxiety (worry, emotionality) are investigated as determinants of the incidental learning of stimuli which are associated with the experience of success or failure. In a first trial of a laboratory study, 83 subjects (44 men and 39 women) had to solve 5-letter-anagrams of different degrees of difficulty within a period of 10 sec for each anagram. Interspersed in this sequence were unsolvable anagrams (“pseudo-anagrams”). For 50% of the 114 anagrams presented on a computer screen, the subject received feedback on the solvability of the item; for the remaining anagrams feedback was withheld. The central aim of the study was to analyze the recognition of success-related items (solved anagrams) as compared to failure-related items (unsolved but solvable anagrams with feedback). Furthermore, the recognition of pseudo-anagrams with no feedback concerning solvability (uncertainty items) was of interest. To this end, a second trial with a recognition test was carried out. In this trial, the subject was confronted with the anagrams of Trial 1 together with an equal number of new anagrams (distractors). The results yield person-specific relationships between actual anxiety and the recognition of success and failure items. For persons high in cognitive avoidance, anxiety was positively associated with the recognition of success items. No such relationship could be established for failure or uncertainty items. On the other hand, for individuals low in avoidance, anxiety was negatively associated with the recognition of unsolved anagrams.
Personality and Individual Differences, 2011
ABSTRACT This review treats individual differences in anxiety and coping from several perspective... more ABSTRACT This review treats individual differences in anxiety and coping from several perspectives. It starts with the argument that structural considerations (often linked to trait concepts) and processing considerations (often linked to situational demands and actual behavior) are not fundamentally in opposition, but that global and uncontextualized trait concepts (e.g., trait anxiety) require revision to incorporate cognitive–affective units such as appraisals, goals, or self-regulatory competencies (cf. Mischel, 2004). The article then presents a personality-oriented coping theory (the model of coping modes; MCM; Hock & Krohne, 2004; Krohne, 1993, 2003) which attempts to incorporate these units. The MCM distinguishes vigilant (uncertainty-oriented) and cognitively avoidant (arousal-oriented) coping processes and views them as dispositional preferences related to personality. Empirical evidence (based on cognitive-experimental designs in the fields of attentional orientation and the interpretation and retrieval of ambiguous and aversive information) is reviewed and supports central assumptions of the theory.
Journal of Research in Personality, 2008
The study investigated the influence of cognitive avoidance, positive affect, and gender on the e... more The study investigated the influence of cognitive avoidance, positive affect, and gender on the evaluation of and memory for threat-related information varying in degrees of aversiveness and ambiguity. Stimulus material consisted of threatening, nonthreatening, and ambiguous pictures. First, valence ratings of the stimuli were collected. This phase was followed by a first memory test. A second memory test was administered three days later. Memory for aversive information was influenced by cognitive avoidance, positive affect, and gender. Avoiders exhibited a comparatively good memory for aversive information in the first (immediate) test and a very poor memory in the delayed testing. A similar pattern was obtained for individuals high in positive affect. Compared to men, women gave more negative ratings to aversive and ambiguous pictures and had a better memory for ambiguous information in the immediate test. Results are discussed within the framework of the repressive discontinuity hypothesis proposed by Hock and Krohne . Coping with threat and memory for ambiguous information: Testing the repressive discontinuity hypothesis. Emotion, 4, 65-86].
Journal of personality and social psychology, 2012
Dispositional styles of coping with threat influence memory for threatening information. In parti... more Dispositional styles of coping with threat influence memory for threatening information. In particular, sensitizers excel over repressors in their memory for threatening information after long retention intervals, but not after short ones. We therefore suggested that sensitizers, but not repressors, employ active maintenance processes during the retention interval to selectively retain threatening material. Sensitive maintenance was studied in 2 experiments in which participants were briefly exposed to threatening and nonthreatening pictures (Experiment 1, N = 128) or words (Experiment 2, N = 145). Following, we administered unannounced recognition tests before and after an intervening task that generated either high or low cognitive load, assuming that high cognitive load would impede sensitizers' memory maintenance of threatening material. Supporting our hypotheses, the same pattern of results was obtained in both experiments: Under low cognitive load, sensitizers forgot less...
Emotion, 2004
Two studies examined the influence of coping dispositions (repression, sensitization, and nondefe... more Two studies examined the influence of coping dispositions (repression, sensitization, and nondefensiveness) and anxiety on the encoding and memory representation of ambiguous threat-related stimuli. In Study 1, memory was tested shortly after encoding. Study 2 contrasted immediate and delayed testing. Repressers showed evidence of "mixed" affective reactions to ambiguous stimuli at encoding, accompanied by weak memory representation of potentially threatening implications of these stimuli. In contrast, sensitizers and anxious individuals manifested a processing bias in favor of threatening implications of ambiguous stimuli. Influences of coping on memory were most pronounced for delayed testing. Anxiety influences on memory were weak. An expectancy-based account of individual differences in processing ambiguous stimuli is discussed.