Anxiety

Definition

Anxiety is an unpleasant emotional state, characterized by tension, apprehension, and worry. It occurs in response to a perceived threat, which in the case of fear is fairly specific and identifiable (e.g., seeing a snake) but in the case of anxiety tends to be vague and suspenseful (e.g., giving a speech). It is a defensive response, one that signals danger and, like other emotions, is thought to have an important function related to survival. In the social arena, the threat is the perceived potential harm to one's self-esteem, self-worth, or self-concept. The anxiety can be domain specific (e.g., text anxiety, public speaking anxiety). Anxiety can help an individual identify a negative event and cope with it; if excessive or uncontrollable, however, anxiety is maladaptive.

Background

The concept of anxiety has a long and revered history in psychology, beginning at least with Sigmund Freud who offered one early conceptualization. He saw anxiety as a warning signal that something threatening could happen. For Freud, neurotic anxiety was the central concern. This is the unconscious fear that one's impulses (the Id) may take over and lead a person to do things that would be punished. The anxiety is a signal to one's rational side (the Ego), and the unconscious worry reflects the internal psychological battle between these psychic forces.

Later theorists, sometimes called post-Freudian, characterized anxiety as basic, stemming from a child's dependency (particularly feelings of being isolated and helpless in a potentially hostile world). Being raised in a nurturing home, however, where security, trust, love, tolerance, and warmth prevail can replace such fears of being abandoned and produce more adaptive relations with other people. Abraham Maslow is highly regarded for his proposal of a hierarchy of needs and his focus on the positive side of human experience (i.e., self-actualization). But he is also noted for placing safety and physical security needs at a fundamental level on the hierarchy, suggesting that they must be satisfied before higher-order needs such as love, esteem, and actualization can be realized.

These ideas set the stage for contemporary research on attachment theory, where the emotional connection between a caregiver and child can either prove secure and dependable (i.e., safe) or insecure. The importance of attachment and a sense of belongingness, and trust in relationships, have come to be central themes for contemporary social psychology. The attachment patterns of adults shows that these infant attachment [Page 43]patterns either persist into adulthood or emerge again in adult long-term intimate relationships.

The social psychological roots of the anxiety construct can also be traced to William James's hypothesis that an emotional state is the result of an interaction of bodily changes and cognitive life. Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer's famous two-factor theory of emotion sees an emotional state as the combination of a diffuse physiological arousal coupled with a cognitive interpretation of that arousal. When the source of arousal is easily identified, the emotion is easily labeled. However, when no arousal is expected, people are subject to cues in the environment that would stimulate an emotion. When those cues are vague and illdefined, the subjective experience may be threatening and may produce anxiety.

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