RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN ANXIETY SENSITIVITY, HYPERVENTILATION, AND EMOTIONAL REACTIVITY TO DISPLAYS OF FACIAL EMOTIONS

Undergraduate women who scored in the top (n = 24) and bottom 15% (n = 24) on the Anxiety Sensitivity Index viewed randomly counterbalanced sets of three neutral and three dysphoric faces after having either hy perventilated or relaxed. Participants rated the amount of change they experienced in Happiness, Sadness, Fear, Anger, Surprise, Disgust, an d Contempt after viewing each face. High Anxiety Sensitive (AS) women reported significantly greater changes on six of the seven emotions, e ven though pretreatment differences in somatically experienced anxiety were covaried out. Significant three-way interactions were found for participants' self-rated changes in Fear and Surprise, with tendencies toward significance (p < .10) also emerging for Anger and Disgust. Th e pattern of interactions was identical for all four variables. Low AS women manifested greater reductions in these four emotions when viewi ng neutral as opposed to dysphoric faces, regardless of whether they h yperventilated or relaxed. High AS women who relaxed manifested simila r discriminative abilities. High AS women who hyperventilated, however , reported no relative changes in emotional arousal to both dysphoric and neutral faces. The blunted discrimination shown by high AS women w ho hyperventilated suggests that, when these individuals are in a phys iologically challenged state, they may be less responsive to ''early w arning'' indicators of social distress displayed by others which may, in turn, cause them to experience subsequent interpersonal difficultie s. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.