10 years of published research on mood-as-input and perseverative worrying: Implications for GAD

1. 10 years of published research on mood-as-input and perseverative worrying: Implications for GAD Graham Davey University of Sussex

2. Negative mood is known to increase perseveration at a worry bout (e.g. Johnston & Davey, 1997; Buhr & Dugas, 2009) – but what is the mechanism through which negative mood has this effect?

3. The Catastrophizing Interview • I’m worried about not being able to move • That I would be attacked in some way • That I would not be able to fight back • That I would not be able to control what other people did to me • That I would feel inadequate • That other people would begin to think I was inadequate • I would not be respected • That I would not have any influence over others • That other people would not listen to me • That it would cause a loss of self-esteem • This would have a negative effect on my relationships • That I would lose friends • That I would be alone • That I would have no-one to talk to • I would not be able to share any thoughts/problems with others • That I would not get advice from others • That none of my problems would be adequately sorted out • That they would remain and get worse • That eventually I would not be able to cope with them • My problems would have more control over me • That they would prevent me from doing other things • That I would be unable to meet new people and make friends • That I would be lonely

4. Johnston & Davey (1997)

5. Testing Mood Congruency Effects • Mood-Congruent Recall • Negative Mood & Semantic Priming • Mood-as-Input Hypothesis

6. Startup & Davey (2001)

7. Mood-as-Input Hypothesis • Martin & Davies (1998) • Stop Rules • The Role of Mood as Information

8. What are stop rules? • Relate to Task Motivation • Performance Focused OR Task Focused • ‘Enough’ OR ‘Enjoy’ • ‘As Many as Can’ (AMA) OR ‘Feel Like Continuing’ (FL)

9. What do we know about stop rules? • Often not easily verbalizable • Can often be derived from dispositional characteristics or meta-beliefs about emotional control strategies • Stop rule type is linked to mood • Stop rules interact with mood to determine perseveration at a task (the ‘Mood-as-Input Hypothesis’, Davey, 2006, Startup & Davey, 2001).

10. What is the Role of Mood? • Concurrent mood becomes a source of information about achieving task goals • Mood valency will interact with stop rule to determine task perseveration • Psychopathology-relevant tasks are frequently conducted under conditions of ‘as many as can’ stop rules and negative mood

11. Predictions from Mood-as-Input Hypothesis • Pathological worriers will experience negative mood while worrying • Pathological worriers will deploy ‘as many as can’ stop rules for worrying • Manipulating stop rules for worrying will affect worry perseveration • Manipulating mood valency without changing stop rules will also affect worry perseveration

12. Manipulating Stop RulesStartup & Davey (2001)

13. Implications • Worriers do not have a perseverative iterative style that is independent of the stop rules they deploy (Kendall & Ingram, 1987; Davey & Levy, 1998) • The nature of the ‘stop rules’ deployed have a causal influence on worry perseveration

14. ‘Responsibility’ and stop rules • Worriers possess elevated levels of ‘inflated responsibility’ for outcomes (Papageorgiou & Wells, 2001) • Naturally occurring and experimentally manipulated responsibility should affect perseveration

15. Startup & Davey (2003)

16. Worry Stop Rule Checklist AMA – ‘Enough’ FL – ‘Enjoy’ What’s done is done, so what’s the point in worrying? I don’t have time to think about this now Stop worrying, things always work out for the best. • I must find a solution to this problem, so keep thinking about it. • I must try and think about the worst possible outcome, just in case it happens • I must think everything through properly

17. Davey, Startup, MacDonald, Jenkins & Patterson (2005)

18. What ends a worry bout? • Mood-as-Input Hypothesis predicts that worry will stop: • If mood becomes more positive • If stop rules change from ‘as many as can’ to ‘feel like continuing’

19. What ends a worry bout? - Mood changes during worrying

20. Changes in Stop Rule EndorsementDavey, Eldridge, Drost & MacDonald (2007)

21. Empirical Facts • Mood interacts with stop rules to generate worry perseveration • Manipulating worry stop rules affects worry perseveration – even in high worriers • Worriers do not have a perseverative iterative style that is independent of the stop rules they deploy • Characteristics of worriers (e.g. responsibility) interact with concurrent negative mood to generate worry perseveration • PSWQ scores are correlated with measures of the deployment of ‘as many as can’ worry stop rules • The end of worry bouts is associated with changes in stop rule deployment rather than changes in mood valency

22. Challenges • Conducting mood-as-input studies on clinical populations with a diagnosis of GAD • Testing the ecological validity of the catastrophizing interview procedure • Integrating mood-as-input findings with existing theories and models of GAD • Exploring the role of mood-as-input processes in the development of pathological worrying and GAD