title: Disgust- and anxiety-based emotional reasoning in non-clinical fear of vomiting.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Emotional reasoning has been described as a dysfunctional tendency to use subjective responses to make erroneous inferences about threatening outcomes in objectively safe situations (e.g., "If I feel anxious/disgusted, there must be danger/risk of becoming ill"). Prior studies found evidence for anxiety-based emotional reasoning (ER) in several anxiety disorders as well as disgust-based ER in healthy individuals scoring above the clinical cut-off on a measure of contamination fear. The current study tested whether disgust- and anxiety-based ER might be involved in fear of vomiting, a phobic disorder in which both fear/anxiety and disgust are assumed to play an important role.
  
  
  METHODS
  Non-clinical participants scoring high (>75%; n = 35) and low (<25%; n = 38) on a measure of fear of vomiting were presented with a series of scripts describing objectively safe everyday situations that systematically varied in the absence/presence of the actor's disgust/anxiety response. Following each script, participants rated their perceived danger and threat of contamination/illness.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In line with hypotheses, specifically high vomit-fearful individuals used experienced disgust and anxiety to overestimate risk of becoming ill. Follow up analyses taking into account shared variance between both emotions revealed that more pronounced ER in the high vomit fearful group was mainly driven by the emotion of disgust.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Current study asked participants to imagine experienced emotions in scenarios instead of experimentally inducing real-life emotions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These findings are consistent with the view that disgust-based ER is involved in fear of vomiting.
authors.affiliation: University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Electronic address: j.r.l.verwoerd@rug.nl.
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Verwoerd
authors.affiliation: University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Wiljo J P J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: van Hout
authors.affiliation: University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Peter J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: de Jong
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000503:physiopathology*; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000503:physiopathology*; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D014839:Vomiting / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Anxiety; Disgust; Emetophobia; Emotional reasoning; Fear of vomiting; Specific phobia of vomiting