104 COGNITIVE THEORY AND RESEARCH ON ANXIETY
tionality and self- concept” (p. 465), with high NA individuals more likely to experience
elevated levels of negative emotions including subjective feelings of nervousness, tension,
and worry, as well as a tendency to have poor self- esteem and to dwell on past mis-
takes, frustrations, and threats (Watson & Clark, 1984). Research within the Big Five
personality tradition have subsumed the notion of N and NA under the higher order,
superordinate personality construct of “negative emotionality” (e.g., Watson, Clark, &
Harkness, 1994).
There is a large correlational and factor analytic research showing an association
between negative emotionality and anxiety in clinical and nonclinical samples (i.e., Lon-
gley, Watson, Noyes, & Yoder, 2006). Higher emotionality is evident in all the anxi-
ety disorders as well as in depression (e.g., Bienvenu et al., 2004; Cox, Enns, Walker,
Kjernisted, & Pidlubny, 2001; Trull & Sher, 1994; Watson, Clark, & Carey, 1988) and
it predicts future anxious symptoms (Gershuny & Sher, 1998; Levenson, Aldwin, Bossé,
& Spiro, 1988). Thus high NA or emotionality is a broad, nonspecific distal vulnerabil-
ity factor for anxiety and its disorders that constitutes a temperamental characteristic of
proneness to nervousness, tension, and worry with roots in genetic and early childhood
experiences (i.e., Barlow, 2002).
Trait Anxiety
Another personality construct so closely related to negative emotionality (i.e., N or
NA) that the two are considered almost synonymous is trait anxiety (Eysenck, 1992).
Spielberger, the strongest proponent for distinguishing between state and trait anxiety,
defined state anxiety as “a transitory emotional state or condition of the human organ-
ism that is characterized by subjective, consciously perceived feelings of tension, appre-
hension and heightened autonomic nervous system activity. A-States vary in intensity
and fluctuate over time” (Spielberger, Gorsuch, & Lushene, 1970, p. 3).
Trait anxiety, on the other hand, is considered to be “relatively stable individual
differences in anxiety proneness” (Spielberger et al., 1970, p. 3). Individuals with high
trait anxiety are more likely to respond to situations of perceived threat with elevations
in state anxiety and evaluate a greater range of stimuli as threatening, have a lower
anxiety activation threshold, and feel more intense anxious states (Rachman, 2004;
Spielberger, 1985). Although there is substantial evidence that Spielberger’s State-Trait
Anxiety Inventory is highly relevant for stress and anxiety (Roemer, 2001), high trait
anxiety is a problematic vulnerability construct because (1) its temporal stability has not
been consistently supported, (2) its unidimensional structure has been challenged, (3)
it is too highly correlated with state anxiety, (4) it may lack specificity for anxiety, and
(5) it embodies a vague idea of vulnerability that is closely aligned with Freud’s concept
of neurotic anxiety (Eysenck, 1992; Rachman, 2004; Reiss, 1997; Roemer, 2001). For
these reasons researchers have looked elsewhere for more specific personality predictors
of anxiety disorders.
Anxiety Sensitivity
In recent years anxiety sensitivity, a fear of or sensitivity to experiencing anxiety, has
emerged as a more promising personality vulnerability construct that takes a more cog-