The Impact of State Anxiety on Fear Inhibition

Abstract

State anxiety was investigated as a moderator of learning to discriminate between safe and danger cues and transfer of fear inhibition within a conditioning paradigm. Participants were induced into a state of high anxiety (n = 21) or low anxiety (n = 24). Inhibitory learning was measured by the reduction in threat expectancy to the presentation of a safety cue (cue that predicts the absence of threat) concurrently with a danger cue (cue that predicts the presence of threat) compared to the presentation of the danger cue alone. As expected, state anxiety induction interfered with inhibitory learning. The current finding is the first to demonstrate that state anxiety has direct causal influence on fear inhibition.