STAI-Anxiety and STAI-Depression Revisited

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du Rocher, Andrew R. and Pickering, Alan. 2022. STAI-Anxiety and STAI-Depression Revisited. Journal of Individual Differences, 43(4), pp. 206-215. ISSN 1614-0001 [Article]

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000373

Abstract or Description

The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) is widely used to measure anxiety in academic, psychiatric, and medical settings. However, it has been proposed that the trait scale does not measure pure anxiety but contains subscales that measure either anxiety or depression. As this may have implications for the interpretation of research, we investigated the differential correlates of these two subscales. Participants (N = 171; Mage = 23.6 years) completed measures of attentional control (attentional focusing; attentional shifting), behavioral approach sensitivity (BAS), trait anger, and interpersonal fear. STAI-anxiety was predicted by interpersonal fear, and trait anger when STAI-depression was held constant. By contrast, STAI-depression was predicted by BAS and attentional shifting when STAI-anxiety was held constant. To further illustrate the functional significance of these results, we reanalyzed a published study that originally showed that total STAI scores predicted affective cognitive control in the emotional face Stroop task. Results showed that STAI-anxiety and STAI-depression differentially predicted the cognitive control of distraction. The significance of our results is discussed in relation to interpreting the STAI in academic and neuropsychiatric/clinical settings.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000373

Additional Information:

This work was funded by Goldsmiths, University of London.

Keywords:

STAI-Anxiety, STAI-Depression, attention, affective traits

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Psychology

Dates: