Abstract

Evidence has shown that individuals with anxiety disorders show more intense fear responses to both stimuli signaling threat and stimuli representing safety. The latter often causes difficulty to learn fear inhibition. This study aimed to assess the role of state anxiety in fear acquisition and extinction. During fear conditioning, geometric figures served as conditioned stimuli and a mild electric shock as unconditioned stimulus. Unconditioned stimulus expectancy ratings were used to assess fear. Results showed that high state anxiety is associated with higher responses to stimuli predicting the aversive stimulus and lower responses to stimuli not predicting it, suggesting that individuals in a high anxiety state have a larger fear activation to danger cues and lower activation to safety cues.