Anxiety buffer disruption: Worldview threat, death thought accessibility, and worldview defense among low and high posttraumatic stress symptom samples

Psychological Trauma : Theory, Research, Practice and Policy
Kenneth E VailDonald Edmondson

Abstract

Decades of research suggest that people are able to function effectively in the world and maintain mental health and well-being, at least in part, by relying on effective sociocultural anxiety buffer systems to shield against the awareness of death. However, according to anxiety buffer disruption theory, posttraumatic stress reflects anxiety buffer disruption, signaling that sociocultural belief systems have been rendered unable to buffer the individual against death awareness. As such, we would not expect to see the normal responses to death awareness meant to bolster and defend those belief systems in participants with posttraumatic stress. To test these hypotheses, we screened for posttraumatic stress in U.S. participants (n = 4,150) and recruited individuals with low (n = 193) and high (n = 205) posttraumatic stress symptoms. Each group was randomly assigned to a worldview-threat or -support condition, followed by a standardized measure of death-thought accessibility (DTA) and worldview defense. In the nonthreat (worldview-support) condition, individuals with high (vs. low) posttraumatic stress had elevated DTA. Further, among individuals with low posttraumatic stress, worldview threat (vs. -support) increased DTA, which in...Continue Reading

Citations

Jan 26, 2021·International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine·David E ReedDonald D McGeary
Mar 30, 2021·Frontiers in Psychology·Daryl R Van Tongeren, Sara A Showalter Van Tongeren

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