The Role Of Trait Anxiety And Attentional Bias On The Decision-making Of Students Of A Military School

BackgroundsThe role of emotion in decision-making has been given more and more attetntion in the last few years. Anxiety is the most usual emotional reaction in the situations of acute stress, and it's inevitably been got by people in daily life. Because of its outstanding universal value and practical significance, the affection of anxiety on decision-making is one of the hottest topics in the field of decision-making.AimsAs the military personnel trained by the national military academies, the military students will play an important role in the national defense construction. So we focused on the military students, and explored the role of trait anxiety and attentional bias on the decision-making to provide the theoretical basis and practical reference for improving the quality of decision-making.MethodsWe try to explore the role of trait anxiety and attentional bias on the decision-making by using the questionnaires and laboratory experiments. Experimentâ… . We selected the freshmen of a military school based on their scores on the trait portion of Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-X), high(upper 27%) and low(lower 27% ) anxious individuals (N=30 respectively) participated the experiment, and we investigated the pattern of anxiety-related attentional bias in subjects with high and low trait anxiety by using the emotional Stroop task.Experimentâ…¡. We selected the subjects which were as the same as those in Experimentâ… . We investigated the effects of trait anxiety on decision-making by using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), and analyzed the correlation of attentional bias and decision-making.Resultsâ… . The interference effects for threat-related words of individual with high trait anxiety are higher than those with low trait anxiety.â…¡. Trait anxiety and sex have significant interactions on decision-making. The scores of individual with high trait anxiety is obviously lower compared to the scores of those with low trait anxiety for the male, but there are no significant differences between the scores of individual with high trait anxiety and the scores of individual with low trait anxiety for the female.The scores of female are obviously higher compared to those of male in high trait anxiety, but there are no significant differences between the scores of female and male in low trait anxiety. There is no significant correlation between attentional bias and decision-making.Conclusionâ… . Individual with high trait anxiety is characterized by an attentional bias for threat-related stimulus compared to those with low trait anxiety.â…¡. Trait anxiety and sex influence decision making. The decision-making of individuals with high trait anxiety is obviously different from those with low trait anxiety for the male, but there are no significant differences between the decision-making of individuals with high trait anxiety and the decision-making of the individuals with low trait anxiety for the female. There are significant sex differences on decision-making in high trait anxiety, but no significant sex differences on decision-making in low trait anxiety.