Co-Worry in Friendship Dyads

Anxiety disorders increase in prevalence from childhood into adulthood. Although cognitive theories are prominent in the etiology and maintenance of anxiety, peer relationships are emerging as salient interpersonal risk factors. This study investigates the effects of specific interpersonal interchanges on anxiety symptoms in college students. 60 undergraduates attended the experiment with a same-sex best friend, and were randomly assigned to the co-worry or neutral conversation condition. Each person completed self-report measures of state anxiety, negative affect and positive affect prior to and following an 8-minute conversation about selfgenerated worry topics such as exams or neutral topics such as the weather. Conversations were videotaped for coding. Results analyzed preto post-conversation anxiety and affect to examine whether worrying with a friend, termed co-worry, increased state anxiety and negative affect compared to the control condition. A 2 (within subject variable of time) by 2 (between subjects factor of experimental condition) repeated measures ANCOVA was conducted with state anxiety, negative affect, and positive affect as the dependent variables. A significant interaction across time was noted for state anxiety, F(1, 104) = 11.62, p = . 001, negative affect, F(1, 108) = 4.40, p = . 038, and positive affect, F(1, 108) = 4.74, p = . 032. Participants in the neutral condition evidenced a decrease in state anxiety and negative affect across time and an increase in positive affect, whereas participants in the worry condition maintained a more negative anxious mood state across time. CO-WORRY IN FRIENDS 3 Co-Worry in Friendship Dyads The prevalence of internalizing disorders increases as adolescents move into adulthood (Silberg et al., 1999). Cognitive theories of internalizing disorders, such as depression and anxiety, are well supported and theorize cognitive mechanisms to account for the disorders’ high comorbidity, whereas interpersonal factors contributing to the etiology and maintenance of internalizing disorders have been primarily explored in the depression literature (Rose, 2002). During this same developmental time period, peer relationships gain salience as correlates of positive adjustment, school outcome, and psychosocial health (Wentzel & McNamara, 1999). Although overall friendship circles and the quality of friendships during adolescence are protective factors from internalizing disorders, recent empirical evidence has examined circumstances under which peers may have a detrimental impact on psychosocial adjustment (Rose, 2002). Considering the buffering effects of friendships for psychosocial health, particularly in girls, and the increase of peer salience during adolescence, the increase of internalizing disorders during this time period is somewhat puzzling. Whereas cognitive theories point to cognitive vulnerability in the types of attributions and schemas utilized in interpreting the world (Ingram & Kendall, 1987), which would account for individual differences in internalizing distress, others have focused on potential interpersonal factors that increase this vulnerability. Recently, a link between the peer literature and internalizing literature theorized that particular peer interactions between best friends involving conversations that focus on negative mood state and past negative life events are associated with increased internalizing symptoms, and depression in particular (Rose, 2002; Rose, Carlson, & Waller, 2007). The extent to which this interactional pattern is specific to depression, or is associated with anxiety as well, has yet to be defined. Given the distinct components of anxiety and depression, there may be CO-WORRY IN FRIENDS 4 distinct interpersonal factors in the development and maintenance of anxiety symptoms similar to the interpersonal factors associated with depressive symptoms. This paper explores the potential interpersonal factors between friends that may serve as a risk factor for anxiety specifically. Anxiety has distinct cognitive patterns that are theorized to contribute to its etiology. These patterns include schemata roles, disproportionate emphasis on the future, and task irrelevant thoughts (Ingram & Kendall, 1987). Anxious individuals are prone to alternate between schemata in which evaluation is self-generated and schemata in which evaluation is generated by others. They also tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time with futurefocused cognitions. Where depressive thinking is characterized by declarative past-oriented statements, anxious thinking is characterized by future-oriented questions concerning threat and an inability to cope with that threat. Such manners of thinking share in common the fact that they are repetitive as well as irrelevant to whatever topic on which the individual should be focused. Anxious cognitions prohibit individuals from functioning in an adaptive fashion, as compared to non-anxious individuals. Worry, the cognitive component of anxiety, reflects a pattern of thought focused primarily on future negative events, though it can at times contain ruminative thinking, accounting in part for the comorbidity between anxiety and depression (Borkovec, Ray, & Stöber, 1998; Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991). The literature indicates that the most common worries surround issues of family, finances, work/school, and health issues (Roemer, Molina, Borkovec, 1997). The evidence also suggests that high levels of worrying can lead to increased feelings of anxiety, particularly generalized anxiety disorder (Borkovec, Robinson, Prezinsky, & DePree, 1983). One aspect of this cognition is the tendency for anxious individuals to apply threat biases to ambiguous situations (Butler & Mathews, 1983). Rather than attending to multiple cues in CO-WORRY IN FRIENDS 5 ambiguous situations, the anxious individual primarily focuses on perceptions or interpretations of threat, thus increasing the likelihood of an anxious response. In contrast, cognitive theories of depression focus on negative schemata and attributions as well, but with a past-oriented focus (Lyubomirsky & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1995; Ingram & Kendall, 1987). Lyubomirsky and Nolen-Hoeksema’s (1995) research on ruminative thought found that participants induced into ruminative states displayed more negative interpretations than those who were not. Most negative interpretations were focused on past events, and the attribution that future events would continue to be negative in nature. Lyubomirsky and NolenHoeksema (1995) posit that such negative future thinking could be the result of dysphoric thinking recalling memories of past negative events. A feedback loop of negative thoughts bringing up negative memories, thus creating more negative thoughts, could be a significant contributing factor to account for the high correlation between rumination and depression. Butler and Mathews (1983) also found that both anxious and depressed individuals employ availability heuristics, recalling readily available memories of past anxious/depressed states, which in turn results in maintaining or enhancing their anxious/depressed mood. Given that cognitive theories posit a cognitive vulnerability to anxiety and depression, negative life events, and in particular interpersonal stressors, may activate cognitive schemata and dysfunctional attributions that interact to create anxious and/or depressive symptoms, depending on the specific content of the dysfunctional schema and attributions (Borkovec, Ray, & Stöber, 1998). The way in which individuals cognitively process their environment influences future thought, feeling, and behavior. The interaction between an individual and their interpersonal world can increase anxiety symptomology, which is why examining the role of peers may be emerging as an important interactional factor to consider. CO-WORRY IN FRIENDS 6 Peer relationships become increasingly important as children move into adolescence. Individuals increasingly turn to peers during adolescence in times of turmoil or distress, and the peers’ influential power increases during adolescence as well (Dishion & Tipsord, 2011; Prinstein, Borelli, Cheah, Simon, & Aikins, 2005). This increase in interpersonal/peer stressors has in part been theorized to contribute to adolescents’ vulnerability to depressive symptoms, especially girls, who place large importance on the level of intimacy within a relationship (Furman & Buhrmester, 1992, La Greca & Harrison, 2005). As well, the potential impact of “emotion contagion” has begun to be studied in the interaction between interpersonal behaviors and cognitive processes, such that vulnerable adolescents are likely to be affected by the moods of their peers (Dishion & Tipsord, 2011). In a parallel fashion, depressogenic attributional styles also have a subsequent effect on the individual’s depressive symptoms (Stevens & Prinstein, 2005). The extent to which peer stress contributes to anxiety symptoms has been far less explored. To bridge the gap between the literatures examining friendship as a typical buffering factor in psychosocial health and the increase in prevalence of internalizing symptoms during adolescence, research has begun to examine the interactions between these realms. Specific interchanges between friends that were characteristic of ruminative cognitive processes associated with depression (Lyubomirsky & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1995), termed “co-rumination”, were assessed via self-report (Rose, 2002). Co-rumination reflects a conversation style where problems are discussed, though not necessarily limited to the self, as is the case of individual rumination (Rose, 2002). Thus, co-rumination was developed to intersect the literatures on increased peer salience in adolescence and the increase in internalizing disorders, particularly depression. Co-rumination was found to have a significant correlation with internalizing CO-WORRY IN FRIENDS 7 symptoms, a collapsed in