Background and objectives: In anxiety-related disorders, excessive avoidance often coexists with an impaired sense of control over external threats. In contrast, lab studies have shown that avoidance responding increase with higher objective controllability over threat, accompanied with more confidence in the effectiveness of the avoidance response. One reason for this divergence could be that those lab studies are overly simplistic with a single, avoidable threat.
Methods: We conducted an experiment that additionally included a completely uncontrollable threat, and we manipulated the reinforcement rate of the avoidance response to the (semi-)controllable threat (75% versus 100%).
Results: The 100% group showed increased avoidance to the controllable threat and decreased avoidance to the unavoidable threat over learning. Interestingly, compared to the 100% group, the 75% group displayed less confidence in their avoidance to the controllable threat and they avoided the uncontrollable threat more often.
Limitations: Only two reinforcement rates of effective avoidance were included, which may limit the generalizability of the current findings. Perceived control was not directly measured.
Conclusions: Lower reinforcement rates create ambiguity between effective and ineffective situations of avoidance, which engenders generalization of unpredictability from effective to ineffective situation, thereby driving up ineffective avoidance rates. Partially reinforced effective avoidance responses and elevated ineffective avoidance responses together lead to more exposure to uncontrollable threat, weakening the sense of control over the threat, which could further increase avoidance behaviors. Controllability is often overlooked in avoidance research but can be key to understanding the development of maladaptive avoidance behaviors.
Keywords: Anxiety; Controllability; Ineffective avoidance; Partial reinforcement.
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