Trait anxiety, trait depression, worry, and memory

A study is reported which investigated the proposal that high trait anxiety is associated with a memory bias for worry themes. Forty-five participants were categorised as being high or low trait anxious on the basis of scores on the (Spielberger et al., 1983) (Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Form Y) (1983)). The participants were requested to rate a number of worry and non-worry statements for how much they generally thought about the issues represented by them. Analysis of the ratings given by the participants showed that low trait anxiety individuals thought about the non-worry items significantly more than worry items. The high trait anxiety participants, however, showed little or no difference in the amount of time spent thinking about worry and non-worry themes. In a subsequent free recall task of the statements it was observed that the low trait anxiety group recalled significantly more non-worry than worry items, whereas there was no such difference for the high trait group. It was also found that the degree of memory bias was related to both positive affectivity and trait anxiety. The implications of such findings are discussed.