38 COGNITIVE THEORY AND RESEARCH ON ANXIETY
self- efficacy and outcome expectation could lead to a reduction in anxiety, especially
if the person’s initial efforts to deal with the threat appeared successful. On the other
hand, low perceived self- efficacy and a negative outcome expectation would lead to a
heightened state of helplessness and greater feelings of anxiety.
Although secondary appraisal of coping resources is triggered by the primary threat
appraisal, both will occur almost simultaneously as a highly reciprocal and interactive
cognitive evaluation (Beck et al., 1985, 2005). As noted previously, the intensity of
anxiety will depend on the degree of threat in relation to one’s perceived capacity to
cope with the danger. In our case of the runner hearing a barking dog, anxiety would
be minimized if he recalled previous positive experiences of dealing with dogs, or if he
remembered he was carrying a can of pepper spray. In clinical anxiety individuals have a
heightened sense of helplessness in the face of certain perceived threats and so conclude
they are unable to deal with the anticipated danger.
Clinician Guideline 2.4
Increasing self- confidence to deal with threat and uncertainty is an important objective of
cognitive therapy of anxiety.Inhibitory Processing of Safety
Beck (1985) noted that anxiety is not only characterized by a selective enhanced pro-
cessing of danger but also a selective suppression of information that is incongruent
with perceived danger. D. M. Clark and Beck (1988) included underestimated rescue
factors (what others can do to help) as a cognitive error that will contribute to an exag-
gerated evaluation of threat in anxiety. It is suggested that in anxiety disorders the
immediate and automatic formation of a threat appraisal based on activation of threat
schemas will so bias the information- processing system toward detecting and evaluat-
ing threat, that any information incongruent with threat schemas will be filtered out,
even ignored. As a result any corrective information, which could lead to a reduction
in the threat value assigned to the situation, is lost and the anxiety persists. So, in our
example, a runner intensely anxious about the barking dog may fail to notice a fence
around the property, thus reducing the chance that the dog will charge out onto the
road. This apparent inability to process the safety aspects of a situation is clearly seen in
the anxiety disorders such as the speech- anxious person who fails to process cues from a
receptive audience, or the test- anxious student who has successfully answered the most
difficult questions.
Another consequence of inhibited processing of safety cues is that the person may
seek inappropriate ways to secure safety or avoid danger. The person with agoraphobia
may only venture outside with certain family members because this appears to reduce the
chance of a panic attack, or the individual with contamination obsessions may develop
certain compulsive rituals to reduce anxiety and secure a sense of safety from the pros-
pect of contamination. Salkovskis (1996b) noted that safety- seeking behavior and avoid-
ance may contribute to the persistence of anxiety, because both prevent disconfirmation
that the perceived threat is benign or will not occur. Thus in health anxiety the person