ArticleBehaviour research and therapy2017
What good are positive emotions for treatment? Trait positive emotionality predicts response to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for anxiety.
Article in Behaviour research and therapy, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 34 citations in OpenAlex.
- Are changes in joviality associated with cognitive behavioral treatment outcomes? Examining an emerging treatment target.Psychotherapy (Chicago, Ill.) · 2023Trial
- What good are positive emotions for treatment? A replication test of whether trait positive emotionality predicts response to exposure therapy for social anxiety disorder.Behaviour research and therapy · 2023Trial
- Treatment-Specific Associations Between Brain Activation and Symptom Reduction in OCD Following CBT: A Randomized fMRI Trial.The American journal of psychiatry · 2021Trial
- Functional connectivity during positive mood and anxiety treatment response in children.Journal of affective disorders · 2026Article
- Temporal Predictions from Anhedonia To Anxiety in Adolescents with Major Depressive Disorder.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2025Article
- From anxiety to depression: A longitudinal investigation into the role of anhedonia.Journal of affective disorders · 2025Article
- Pretreatment anhedonia as a predictor of exposure-based anxiety treatment outcomes.Journal of psychiatric research · 2025Article
- Anyone but Me: Unrealistic Optimism, Emotions and Anxiety in the Face of COVID-19 Pandemic.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Anhedonia in Anxiety Disorders.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2022Article
- Reconnecting in the Face of Exclusion: Individuals with High Social Anxiety May Feel the Push of Social Pain, but not the Pull of Social Rewards.Cognitive therapy and research · 2022Article
- Positive emotion dysregulation and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms: Investigating the role of anxiety sensitivity.Journal of anxiety disorders · 2021Article
- The role of emotion dysregulation in the association between posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and suicidal thoughts and behaviors among veterans.Journal of clinical psychology · 2021Article
- Descriptives and baseline ecological momentary assessed predictors of weight change over the course of psychological treatments for binge eating disorder.Journal of psychosomatic research · 2021Article
- Change in neural response during emotion regulation is associated with symptom reduction in cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders.Journal of affective disorders · 2020Review
- Higher- and lower-order personality traits and cluster subtypes in social anxiety disorder.PloS one · 2020Article
- Brain and Physiological Markers of Autonomic Function Are Associated With Treatment-Related Improvements in Self-Reported Autonomic Dysfunction in Veterans With Gulf War Illness: An Exploratory Pilot Study.Global advances in health and medicine · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveCognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is empirically supported for the treatment of anxiety disorders; however, not all individuals achieve recovery following CBT. Positive emotions serve a number of functions that theoretically should facilitate response to CBT - they promote flexible patterns of information processing and assimilation of new information, encourage approach-oriented behavior, and speed physiological recovery from negative emotions. We conducted a secondary analysis of an existing clinical trial dataset to test the a priori hypothesis that individual differences in trait positive emotions would predict CBT response for anxiety.
methodParticipants meeting diagnostic criteria for panic disorder (n = 28) or generalized anxiety disorder (n = 31) completed 10 weekly individual CBT sessions. Trait positive emotionality was assessed at pre-treatment, and severity of anxiety symptoms and associated impairment was assessed throughout treatment.
resultsParticipants who reported a greater propensity to experience positive emotions at pre-treatment displayed the largest reduction in anxiety symptoms as well as fewer symptoms following treatment. Positive emotions remained a robust predictor of change in symptoms when controlling for baseline depression severity.
conclusionsInitial evidence supports the predictive value of trait positive emotions as a prognostic indicator for CBT outcome in a GAD and PD sample.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.