Influence of personality on learning and related processes among nonclinical panickers

This study examined hypothesized personality-related individual differences in learning and related processes among four groups of participants who differed in presence vs. absence of nonclinical panic attacks and in high vs. low self-reported agoraphobic avoidance. Variables of interest were (a) level of audible stimuli tolerated, (b) magnitude of skin resistance (SR) responding to audible stimuli, (c) rate of habituation to an audible stimulus, and (d) evidence of conditioning of a neutral stimulus to an aversive audible stimulus. The four groups in this study were found to occupy different locations in Eysenckian two dimensional personality space as predicted. Nonclinical panickers high on agoraphobic avoidance were highest on neuroticism and trait anxiety while nonpanickers low on agoraphobic avoidance were lowest on neuroticism and trait anxiety. The former group was lower than the latter on extroversion. Nonclinical panickers low on avoidance and nonpanickers high on avoidance were intermediate on these three measures.