Does Disgust Facilitate Anxiety Sensitivity? An Experimental Study

The present study was designed to test the possibility that disgust may facilitate anxious psychopathology by facilitating levels of anxiety sensitivity. Using an experimental design, four groups of participants experienced inductions of disgust, anxiety, happiness or neutral mood, and analogue measures representative of beliefs related to anxiety sensitivity were taken before and after these mood inductions. The results suggested that while an anxious mood induction did cause increases in self-reported anxiety sensitivity beliefs, this was not the case with a disgust mood induction. In addition, both neutral and happy mood inductions resulted in a decrease in the endorsement of anxiety sensitivity beliefs. However, across all participants, regardless of the mood induction procedure they received, increases in anxiety sensitivity measures were significantly predicted by decreases in happy mood ratings and increases in arousal ratings. While the present results do not provide any direct evidence for disgust facilitating anxiety sensitivity, we discuss the view that changes in anxiety sensitivity can be predicted by changes in some of the general characteristics of mood, and that this may represent a further mechanism by which disgust can affect anxious psychopathology.