Looming Vulnerability by John H. Riskind & Neil A. Rector

Author:John H. Riskind & Neil A. Rector
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493987825
Publisher: Springer New York

Other Maladaptive Coping

Cognitive Overload and Maladaptive Coping. A chronic or prolonged activation of the LCS can lead to a sense of cognitive-affective overload (e.g., Wegner, 1994; Wegner, Erber, & Zanakos, 1993). We suggest that if individuals experience an unrelenting and cross-situational sense of behavioral urgency, this can deplete mental resources that they require for effective coping (Muraven, Tice, & Baumeister, 1998; Schmeichel & Baumeister, 2004; Vohs, Baumeister, & Ciarocco, 2005). Based on this reasoning, we expect that a person with LCS, and particularly when it is activated, can have fewer mental resources with which to engage in successful mood-regulation or to cope with potential threats (see Riskind & Williams, 2006).

In combination with the above, mental depletion of coping resources and cognitive overload could make it more difficult to step back from any inflated initial automatic negative appraisals and engage in “rational” re-evaluations of the magnitude of threats or of coping responses that remain available. On a similar note, Gilbert and Malone (1995) have proposed that the initial cognitive appraisals that individuals make of events are normally simplistic and impressionistic. Thus, to have more balanced appraisals, individuals must take a second step involving more effortful cognitive activity to adust their appraisals by taking account of additional information. However, individuals do not ordinarily take this extra step if they are feeling threatened, stressed, fatigued, or distracted. This account aligns with the possibility that the cognitive overload and mental depletion resulting from the LCS can therefore impede individuals from adjusting initially extreme automatic judgments.

To the extent that they have a diminished capacity for mental control while having exaggerated threat ideation, individuals can come to rely on ineffective, inflexible, “default” coping strategies (Riskind & Williams, 2006). Although these would have the advantage that they can be rapidly deployed, they have the cost of often being exaggerated and unnecessary, as well as represent highly restricted avoidance coping strategies (Riskind & Williams, 2006).

In research related to the foregoing concerns, Williams (2002) developed a measure of coping flexibility (the ability to re-evaluate and apply multiple coping strategies in response to changes in the veridical conditions of threat). His studies with this measure confirmed that individuals with the LCSs tend to use rigid and inflexible avoidance coping styles. In addition, this link or association between LCS and avoidance coping was stronger than the link between anxiety and such avoidance coping.

As we described, activation of the LCS is assumed to lead to the generation of a stream of threat ideation in the individual’s stream of consciousness. This threat ideation intensifies the person’s perception of behavioral urgency due to threat as well as the person’s feelings of fear. Evidence that the LCS can generate a stream of threat ideation comes from a short-term prospective study by Riskind, Calvete, and Black (2017), mentioned earlier, that used a thought tapping paradigm. In this study, we assessed threat ideation four times over the course of 3 weeks leading up to a public speech. The LCS for social threats prospectively predicted the extent to

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