Know Yourself: Effects of Interoception and Emotion Conceptualization on Anxiety

Anxiety is a major cause of distress for many Americans. Much could be gained from understanding the fundamental processes that cause this maladaptive state. According to a psychological constructionist perspective, anxiety may arise when people perceive and make meaning of their internal physical sensations as an instance of threat. As part of a separate experiment involving stress induction, we collected self-report data intended to measure interoceptive sensibility, emotion conceptualization and differentiation, and anxiety. Participants completed the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) in order to induce higher physiological arousal and state anxiety. I hypothesized that interoceptive sensibility, emotion conceptualization, and emotion differentiation would serve as a buffer against anxiety resulting from the TSST. I argued, however, that after a certain point the relationship between interoceptive sensibility and anxiety would shift to positive, demonstrating a curvilinear relationship between interoceptive sensibility and anxiety. A negative relationship was found between interoceptive sensibility and trait anxiety. Alexithymia, measured as lack of emotion conceptualization, was positively correlated with trait anxiety. These findings both add to and challenge the current literature on contributing and mitigating factors underlying anxiety.Bachelor of Art