ReviewJournal of anxiety disorders2021
Fear and anxiety in the face of COVID-19: Negative dispositions towards risk and uncertainty as vulnerability factors.
Review in Journal of anxiety disorders, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 75 citations in OpenAlex.
- Mental Health Impact of Early Stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Individuals with Pre-Existing Mental Disorders: A Systematic Review of Longitudinal Research.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Pooled it
- Thinking Through Parenthood: The Role of Intolerance of Uncertainty and Personality.Scandinavian journal of psychology · 2026Article
- An Investigation on Integral Emotions as Parallel Predictors for Risky Financial Behavior.PsyCh journal · 2026Article
- Prevalence and Factors Associated With Acute Stress Disorder Among Adults Ever Infected With COVID-19 During the Ending Phase of the Pandemic in 7 Chinese Cities: Cross-Sectional Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2026Article
- Mediating effect of fear of happiness between intolerance of uncertainty and anxiety among Lebanese adults.Global mental health (Cambridge, England) · 2026Article
- Interpretable machine learning for classification and risk factor identification of anxiety, depression, and insomnia symptoms after the full opening of China's COVID-19 lockdown.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- Anxiety in Outdoor Experiential Education: Examining Predictors, Sources, and Implications for Program Design.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Nurses' Knowledge and Anxiety About Human Monkeypox Virus Infection: A Cross-Sectional Study.Nursing & health sciences · 2025Article
- Longitudinal Associations Between Sources of Uncertainty and Mental Health Amongst Resettled Refugees During the COVID-19 Pandemic.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Unveiling the impact: understanding long-term care workers' experiences and their perceptions of resident challenges amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.BMC geriatrics · 2025Article
- Risk and Loss Aversion and Attitude to COVID and Vaccines in Anxious Individuals.Computational psychiatry (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- How perceived risk of recurrence strengthens health management awareness in stroke patients: the chain mediating role of risk fear and health literacy.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Italian Version of the Hospital Aggressive Behaviour Scale-Users: Initial Psychometric Evaluation among Hospital Healthcare Professionals.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Intolerance of uncertainty as a predictor of anxiety severity and trajectory during the COVID-19 pandemic.Journal of anxiety disorders · 2024Article
- How Is the Fear of War Impacting Italian Young Adults' Mental Health? The Mediating Role of Future Anxiety and Intolerance of Uncertainty.European journal of investigation in health, psychology and education · 2024Article
- Intolerance of Uncertainty and Worry Prospectively Predict COVID-19 Anxiety and Distress: A 4-Year Longitudinal Study.Behavior therapy · 2024Article
- Article
- Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Resting-State Brain Activity in Individuals with Tinnitus.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- Anxiety in post-covid-19 syndrome - prevalence, mechanisms and treatment.Neuroscience applied · 2024Review
- The rise in mortality due to intentional self-poisoning by medicines in Brazil between 2003 and 2022: relationship with regional and global crises.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic it is important to identify factors that make people particularly vulnerable of developing mental-health issues in order to provide case-specific treatments. In this article, we examine the roles of two psychological constructs - originally put forth in the behavioral decision sciences - in predicting interindividual differences in fear responses: general risk aversion (GRA) and intolerance of uncertainty (IU). We first provide a review of these constructs and illustrate why they may play important roles in shaping anxiety-related disorders. Thereafter we present an empirical study that collected survey data from 550 U.S. residents, comprising self-assessments of dispositions towards risk and uncertainty, anxiety- and depression levels, as well as demographic variables - to thus test the extent to which these psychological constructs are predictive of strong fear responses related to COVID-19 (i.e., mortal fear, racing heart). The results from Bayesian multi-model inference analyses showed that GRA and IU were more powerful predictors of fear responses than demographic variables. Moreover, the predictive power of these constructs was independent of general anxiety- and depression levels. Subsequent mediation analyses showed that the effects of GRA and IU were both direct and indirect via anxiety. We conclude by discussing possible treatment options, but also highlight that future research needs to further examine causal pathways and conceptual overlaps.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.