Abstract

Introduction: Anxiety disorders constitute the most prevalent subgroup of mental health conditions. While anxious individuals are more widely known as socially withdrawn and shy, recent research highlights a rather non-prototypical image, one that is aggressive. The main goal of this event-related brain potential study is to augment our knowledge of the neurophysiological response of hostile attribution biases of anxious individuals to ambiguous situations. Methods: Using pre-collected data from a sample of 68 undergraduate and community-based adult participants, this study aims to explore the N400 deflection utilizing the Hostile Expectancy Violation Paradigm with anxious individuals, and whether the N400 deflection persists after controlling for aggression. Results: A more negative amplitude was observed in response to a critical word that mismatched rather than matched with the person’s expected hostile intention. Regression analyses revealed that anxiety scores negatively predicted the N400 following the mismatched expected hostile intention while controlling for reactive aggression. This suggests that the violation of hostile expectancy (non-hostile condition) regarding the intention behind an ambiguous, provocative behaviour is more pronounced among anxious participants. Conversely, for the violation of non-hostile expectancy (hostile condition), the overall model was significant, although anxiety scores did not account for the overall effect, reactive aggression did. Conclusion: This study provides preliminary evidence that anxiety symptoms are uniquely related to hostile attribution bias independent of reactive aggression. Our results encourage an individualized approach to treatment as we now know that anxiety has specific cognitive distortions measurable through EEG. Future research should aim to replicate these findings with a clinically diagnosed sample.