Abstract

This study investigated the mechanism by which individuals with symptoms of generalized anxiety maintain pessimistic beliefs despite repeatedly experiencing new positive experiences that contradict their beliefs. A total of 101 college students completed a belief updating task and self-reported questionnaires to measure their levels of generalized and trait anxieties. In the belief updating task, they predicted the probability of positive or negative daily events occurring to themselves or the average population in one month. Afterward, they were presented with manipulated actual average probabilities (better or worse than expected) by adding or subtracting random values from their predicted average probabilities. After receiving this information, the participants predicted the probability of the same events occurring to themselves again. The difference between the predicted probability of the events occurring to oneself and the average population was calculated, and the correlation between this difference and the symptoms of generalized and trait anxieties was assessed. The results showed that generalized anxiety symptoms were associated with pessimistic predictions of negative events, whereas trait anxiety was associated with pessimistic predictions of both positive and negative events. Additionally, the difference between the first and second responses of the probability of everyday events occurring to oneself was calculated as the updated score. The study then examined the relationship between this updated score and the symptoms of generalized anxiety. A significant negative relationship was found between general anxiety symptoms and the updated score of the good news of a positive event. This relationship remained significant even after controlling for trait anxiety. These results suggest that individuals with higher levels of general anxiety are less likely to incorporate the information that positive daily events are more likely to occur than expected into their belief system.