All negative affects are not equal: Anxiety but not depression predicts risk-taking

Item does not contain fulltextUsing two behavioral risk tasks (Balloon Analogue Risk Task BART; Lejuez et al. 2002 and Columbia Card Task, CCT; Figner et al. 2009) that mimic important features of real-world risk taking behaviors, we investigated the effects of different types of negative affect on risk taking. Methods: Participants (N¼50) were first administered the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS; Zigmond et al. 1983). One month later, they completed the BART and the cold CCT, in counterbalanced order. State mood was assessed before participants played the CCT and BART. Findings: Higher levels of anxiety were associated with less risk taking in both tasks; depression was unrelated to risk taking. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that these findings were robust to mood effects. Discussion: Findings from the current study indicated that healthy subjects’ risk taking tendencies vary between anxiety and depression. Implications for prevention of health risks are discussed. 194 EHPS 2012 abstracts Downloaded by1 p