Anxious appraisals: a prospect theory perspective to understand cognitive processes underlying biased risk preferences in anxiety

Abstract

People with anxiety often exhibit biased appraisals of threat and show risk-averse choices. In behavioral studies, a multitude of processes, including altered perceptions of value and distorted weightings of outcome probabilities, were found to underlie risk sensitivity. In this research, we aim to understand which of these processes is responsible for exaggerated threat appraisal in anxiety. First, we applied a prospect theory model onto 442 subjects’ choices between various uncertain gambles, which allowed us to parameterize value perceptions and decision weighting distortions using the economic risk parameter (α) and the probability weighting parameter (γ), respectively. We also collected measures of the subjects’ anxiety levels using self-report questionnaires. Finally, we regressed anxiety on α and γ to investigate the degree to which subjective modifications of value and/or probability are associated with exaggerated threat appraisal in anxiety. Our research found that α plays the key role in this effect, which is evident both before and after removing noisy data from inattentive subjects.