The Influence of Reappraising Anxiety on Risk-taking

The literature suggests that individuals with higher levels of anxiety tend to take fewer risks. With the knowledge that there are positive risks that aid in everyday functioning, the decline in risk-taking by those with anxiety could be of concern. Reappraising anxiety as beneficial has been shown to increase subsequent performance on a variety of tasks. The purpose of this study was to examine whether having participants reappraise their anxiety as beneficial would influence their willingness to take more risks in a subsequent task. Participants were randomly assigned to either a reappraisal condition or a control condition. Participants in the reappraisal condition were given instructions to view their anxiety as beneficial in order to perform best. Participants in the control condition were given neutral instructions. Anxiety was measured using the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21). The Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) measured risk-taking. It was hypothesized that 1) higher levels of anxiety would be associated with lower levels of risk-taking, 2) participants in the reappraisal condition would take more risks than participants in the control condition, 3) the reappraisal instructions would have a greater influence on participants with higher anxiety and, 4) the reappraisal group would better learn the differences in the explosion probabilities for the three different color balloons. Results indicated that higher levels of anxiety were associated with lower levels of risk-taking. However, participants’ risk-taking did not differ across the reappraisal and control conditions. Further research is needed to determine if reappraising anxiety as beneficial is a successful strategy for increasing risk-taking.