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The Mediational Effect of Experiential Avoidance in the Relationship between Harm Avoidance and Anxiety Symptoms

Abstract

Most people prefer avoiding anxious feelings over experiencing them. However, the efforts to avoid anxious feelings result in paradoxical effects which are characterized by the amplifications of frequency, intensity and duration of anxiety. Therefore, clinical issues are not the experiences of anxiety per se but the efforts to avoid them. In this context, Bradley(2000) proposed that anxiety disorders reflect a combination of the experienced anxious feelings(i.e., experience component) and the efforts which an individual makes to deal with them(i.e., control component). What makes normal anxiety into pathological anxiety disorder is experiential avoidance, that is the dysfunctional attitude to psychological experiences. In present studies, the authors investigated the mediational effect of experiential avoidance in the relationships between harm avoidance and anxiety symptoms. Harm avoidance is the temperamental vulnerability to anxious feelings. In order to evaluate goodness-of-fit of the mediation model, two studies were conducted. In Study 1, cross-sectional data were collected from 328 undergraduate students and were analyzed by structural equation modeling method. The results of Study 1 revealed that experiential avoidance partially mediated the relationship between harm avoidance and anxiety symptoms. In Study 2, which was designed to examine whether the results of Study 1 could be cross-validated, short-term longitudinal data were collected from an independent sample and were analyzed by structural equation modeling methods. The results of Study 2 showed that experiential avoidance fully mediated the relationship between harm avoidance and anxiety symptoms. These findings suggest that temperamental vulnerability(i.e., harm avoidance) influences anxiety symptoms directly as well as indirectly, through mediation of the attitudinal vulnerability(i.e., experiential avoidance). Based on the findings, the authors discussed the implications of present studies in theoretical and clinical manner. Finally, the limitations of these studies were discussed along with suggestions for further research.

keywords
위험회피, 체험회피, 불안증상, harm avoidance, experiential avoidance, anxiety disorder

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