Worry as an adaptive avoidance strategy in healthy controls but not in pathological worriers.

The cognitive avoidance model of worry assumes that worry has the adaptive function to keep under control the physiological arousal associated with anxiety. This study aimed to test this model by the use of a fear induction paradigm in both pathological and healthy individuals. Thirty-one pathological worriers and 36 healthy controls accepted to be exposed to a fear induction paradigm (white noise) during three experimental conditions: worry, distraction, and reappraisal.