The Effects Of Angry Priming On Interpretational Bias Of Individuals With High Or Low Trait Anxiety

It was well-established that high anxiety individuals would show interpretational bias. They tended to interpret ambiguous information in a threatening manner. Although interpretational bias was associated with anxiety, the nature of this association remained undetermined. In some further researches, it was found that not only anxiety, but other negative emotions were associated with interpretational bias, such as anger. Although individuals showed interpretational bias under anger, it was undetermined that anger could induce interpretational bias independent of anxiety, because of individuals with high trait anger also anxiety.Reviewed the past studies in China, we found it was lack of studying on interpretational bias. There were two purposes in this study. In the first study, we wanted to examine that whether high trait anxiety individuals would show interpretational bias. The experiment result confirmed this assumption. High trait anxiety individuals tended to interpret ambiguous information in a threatening manner. In the second study, we researched the effects of angry priming on interpretational bias to individuals with trait anxiety. The design was 2(high trait anxiety/low trait anxiety)×3(anger/neutral/happy). The subjects'trait angry level was controlled, so it could avoid the effect of underlying anxiety accompanying anger on research results, and the results could attribute to anger priming. It was found that, anger directly give rise to a interpretational bias in individuals with low trait anxiety. Anger could increase the level of interpretational bias in individuals with high trait anxiety. Happy mood could decrease the level of interpretational bias in individuals with high trait anxiety. But it could not change the level of interpretational bias in individuals with low trait anxiety.