title: Cognitive specificity and positive-negative affectivity: complementary or contradictory views on anxiety and depression?
abstract: A principal factor analysis, conducted on a mixed psychiatric outpatient sample (N = 470), identified both common and specific dimensions underlying anxiety and depression. Although an initial single-factor extraction accounted for a significant proportion of variance in cognitive and symptom measures of anxiety and depression, a two-factor solution, in which anxiety and depression formed separate dimensions, proved to be the better solution. MANOVAS performed on pure depressed, pure anxious, and mixed anxious/depressed subgroups provided evidence of a specific cognitive profile for anxiety and depression. The mixed subsample evidenced greater severity, a mixed cognitive and symptom profile, and character traits that may indicate increased vulnerability to psychological disturbance. Results are discussed in terms of Beck's (1976) cognitive content-specificity hypothesis and the positive-negative affect model (Watson & Tellegen, 1985).
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada.
authors.forename: D A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Clark
authors.forename: A T
authors.initials: AT
authors.lastname: Beck
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Stewart
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D003071:Cognition; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010556:Personality Tests