(PS1-52) Just Do It: The Influence of Invalidation on Anxiety and Willingness to be Stressed

Abstract Text:

Background: Validating and invalidating responses play an important role in emotional processes (Linehan, 1997). Invalidation, the communication that a person’s emotional experience is wrong or does not make sense, has been associated with increased emotion dysregulation, emotional reactivity, physiological and affective distress (Shenk & Fruzzetti, 2011; Schreiber & Veilleux; Yap et al., 2008; Zielinski et al., 2022) and lower adherence to a challenging task (Linton et al., 2012). While these responses have been linked to internal factors contributing to anxiety, no work has examined direct links between perceived invalidation and self-reported anxiety symptoms. We hypothesized that perceived invalidation would be associated with self-reported anxiety. We also hypothesized that validating and invalidating responses would be linked to willingness to engage in a stressful task, such that people would experience greater willingness when validated than when invalidated.

Methods: Undergraduate students (n=55; 81.5% female; 79.6% white) aged 18-22 (M = 19, SD =0.88) were recruited via the SONA system. Participants completed baseline measures (PIES, DASS-21, GAD-7), engaged in a stress-induction task, then were asked to share their emotional experience. Participants were randomly assigned to receive a validating or invalidating experimenter response. Simple linear regressions and a between-subjects ANOVA were run using SPSS.

Results: Significant omnibus regression models emerged that accounted for 25.7% of the variance in physiological anxiety symptoms ([F(2, 48) = 8.32]; DASS anxiety scores) and 27.6% of the variance in generalized anxiety symptoms ([F(2, 48) = 9.14]; GAD-7 scores). These effect sizes were both medium-large (sr2 = 0.23 and 0.15, respectively). There was not a significant effect of experimenter response on willingness to engage in the math task again [F(1, 43) = 3.53, p = .067, 2 = 0.05]. In other words, levels of willingness to engage in the stressful task again were similar for those who received both a validating response (M = 5.36, SD = 2.57) and an invalidating response (M = 4.00, SD = 2.30).

Conclusion: While perceived invalidation was associated with increased anxiety symptoms, validating and invalidating responses were not linked with willingness to repeat a stressful task. It’s possible that external validation does not influence a person’s willingness to experience stress. It’s also possible that the source of validation is important; perhaps invalidation from close relationships would have a stronger impact on willingness than invalidation from a stranger.