Action Control and the Relationship between Anhedonia, Anxiety, and Unconscious Inhibition of Positive Information

Previous research suggests that individuals with difficulty upregulating positive affect exhibit below-chance accuracy when identifying positive words presented outside of awareness, an effect termed subchance perception of positive information (SPPI). Previous findings also suggest that state orientation may underlie the relationship between clinical symptoms such as anxiety and anhedonia and SPPI. The current study addressed methodological limitations of previous research and tested hypotheses that state oriented individuals exhibit SPPI and that state orientation underlies the relationship between clinical symptoms and accuracy in identifying briefly-presented positive words. Results did not support hypotheses. The null findings in this study suggest that the relationship between action orientation and subchance perception of positive information may be less robust than preliminary findings suggested. Findings yielded from exploratory analyses suggested that future studies should include participants with greater symptom severity in order to have sufficient power to detect relationships between positive word accuracy and clinical symptoms