A study at Tel Aviv University shows that the mind of an anxious person is less sensitive to his environment
It is common to think that a tendency to anxiety involves hypersensitivity - because an anxious person tends to fear and feel threatened relatively easily. But a new study at Tel Aviv University suggests that anxiety may not be due to excess sensitivity, but the opposite. This is what psychologist and doctoral student Tal Frankel from the School of Psychological Sciences and the Adler Center for Research in Child Development and Psychopathology claims, in a study she is conducting under the guidance of Prof. Yair Bar-Haim.
As part of a study on panic processing in the brains of anxious and non-anxious people, the researchers examined brain activity when exposed to panic stimuli. The examination of the electrical activity in the brain using EEG actually showed less arousal in the anxious, compared to the group of non-anxious subjects. The results of the study were recently published in the journal Biological Psychology.
"The significance of the findings is that the anxiety-prone subjects were less sensitive to subtle changes in their environment," Frankel explains. "Anxious people may have a reduced ability to assess threats, which is necessary for an effective process of making decisions and regulating panic reactions - therefore they react with increased intensity to relatively minor threats. Non-anxious people probably have a subconscious early warning system that allows them to prepare for emerging threats. In other words: the anxious are surprised by frightening stimuli that their non-anxious friends have already managed to absorb, analyze and categorize according to the appropriate level of threat."
Measuring anxiety in the subconscious
"Anxious people process stimuli in a biased way," Frankel explains. "Things that a non-anxious person automatically processes and dismisses as harmless, are defined as a threat by the anxious person. Most studies measure behavioral responses to panic stimuli, so they state that the anxious person is more sensitive."
To get a more accurate picture of both the neural and behavioral responses, the researchers selected subjects from a group of 240 undergraduate students at the university. Using the Spielberger index of anxious traits, they identified 10% from each side of the spectrum - the most anxious, and those who suffer from anxiety the least. These subjects participated in the final phase of the study.
Initially, the researchers measured behavioral responses to panic stimuli. The participants were shown a series of pictures of a frightened person - with an increasing level of panic, where the degree of panic was pre-defined in percentages. The anxious subjects among the subjects perceived the panic sooner: they recognized that the person in the picture looked scared as early as 32%, while the non-anxious only recognized it at a panic level of 39% on average.
But according to Frankel, the EEG tests showed a different picture. To examine the brain response at the same time as the behavioral response, the researchers measured the brain waves while viewing the images. It turned out that at the subconscious level, the non-anxious did a deep processing of the panic stimulus, which affected the behavioral response, while the anxious did not.
Compensation for a "less sensitive" brain
"In a deeper examination, it becomes clear that non-anxious people can simply afford to be more relaxed when making the decision: whether to define a certain stimulus as a threat, or not?" Frankel explains. "It may all be due to the level of preparation. A non-anxious person benefits from early warning about a stimulus, because their subconscious notices subtle changes in the environment before they consciously notice a threat. Anxious people have no such preparation, and therefore their reaction is more acute - as if the threat had attacked them from behind."
"According to the EEG results, what appears to be behavioral hypersensitivity is actually an attempt by the anxious person to compensate for a lack of perceptual sensitivity," she concludes.
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What's more, maybe if anxiety disorders are put into different categories, the things said will be able to get their rightful place. There are so many types of anxiety disorders. Maybe you should sort them first.
In general, reality (and various studies) show that a lack of empathy also leads to a lack of anxiety (and vice versa), therefore cruel acts were and are being done all the time by people who lack empathy and anxiety.
Unless psychopaths are actually the result of "over empathy" as will be understood from such studies.
Shameful arguments.
Instead of science showing the world the depth and complexity, it glosses over everything..just like Aria claims.
As an anxious person - I can testify that I am hyper-sensitive and empathetic to everything that happens... and precisely because of over-sensitivity, empathy and "eating movies" about catastrophic situations - the "normal" things that people are scared of, may not activate any distress mechanism in me, because I have already gotten used to it Myself for so many years to shocking infernal threats...that the non-anxious minds of all kinds simply do not think of.
It is precisely people who are devoid of emotional awareness of everything that is happening around them, treat every threat in a "reasonable" manner and in order to solve the problem at that moment, they do not sink into a whole world of anxieties and annoyances.
A really infuriating study.
Because there is also a matter of personality structure here
for example
A suspicious and aggressive and competitive person by nature will always be right to recognize in advance the development of a dangerous situation
Whereas a person who is more open (and therefore also alert to the pain and anxieties of his environment) will devote less effort to protect himself and will therefore fall victim to the emergence of dangerous situations in his environment
There is also a matter of orientation and intention that is at the foundation of identity
A loving person is not always able and does not always know how to deal with situations of hatred and an honest person does not always know how to deal with fraud
The problem with these studies is that they express a mechanical and functional world view, while luckily man is a little more than that.
Unfortunately, as demonstrated over and over again, the behavioral sciences and psychology in particular have not yet freed themselves from mechanistic concepts that depress and flatten precisely the most beautiful and interesting aspects of human existence
Answer to the point
In my opinion, the idea is wonderful, it may not prove to be true in the end, but there is something very attractive about it.
For example in point 2 you raise the question of anxiety and driving.
The theory as presented gives the following prediction:
Anxious people will be characterized by driving with more extreme braking characteristics and a longer constant speed output than non-anxious people. The claim is that they do not detect subtle changes in the behavior of other drivers in time.
A very interesting question that can contribute to our understanding of how to build safer roads and cars.
An article full of contradictions and misunderstandings.
1) Those who reject certain stimuli already in the early stages of an analysis, are definitely less sensitive. The best example to illustrate this is a person who is unable to hear or see. It will be completely insensitive because it has not passed the signals on.
2) The researcher assumes that "anxiety" stems from what she calls "threat". But this is not true. For example, driving for 5 seconds on Israeli roads has so many threats that an anxious person should be completely paralyzed. Which never happens.
3) Anxiety leads to blackouts, so why did the researchers expect to see a stronger EEG? Maybe the anxiety will cause a kind of system shutdown?
As a sufferer of anxiety disorder for over 10 years, and that the issue is close to his heart, and I have two mistakes..
:
1. What is "anxious people"?? "Normal" people have an anxious nature and there is an anxiety disorder, which is already a disorder.
2. There is confusion between the cause and the caused - it doesn't matter that much what the person's level of sensitivity was before the disease.
After the person already suffers from an anxiety disorder, there is a consistent attempt by him to ignore the centers of distress (wheezing, etc.) and reduce the effect of anxiety from them. It does cause insensitivity, but it is very focused on certain things, while other things are still normal or reinforced..
So insensitivity can be caused by an anxiety disorder and not a cause.
Fun.