Acute fear inhibits the brain, while chronic fear protects it

Scientists from Radboud University in Nijmegen found that acute situational anxiety reduces a person's engagement in routine tasks, while chronic trait anxiety paradoxically smooths out this effect. The results of the study were published in the scientific journal Communications Psychology.

Psychologists have long distinguished between two types of anxiety — state anxiety and trait anxiety. The first is a short-term agitation in response to stress, while the second is a stable predisposition to anxious reactions. The authors of the study hypothesized that acute stress should push people to immerse themselves more deeply in work as it becomes more complex, while chronically anxious individuals would lack this resource. However, a series of experiments involving more than 600 volunteers demonstrated exactly the opposite picture.

Participants were asked to solve arithmetic problems of varying difficulty levels. Before that, they were asked to recall and describe in detail a negative event from their own lives — in order to alter their emotional state. It turned out that situational anxiety not only fails to help with concentration but also noticeably suppresses interest in the task, disrupting the state of flow — that very feeling of complete absorption in work. People who were in a state of acute stress demonstrated lower engagement and requested higher financial compensation for retaking the test — up to one euro.

Chronic anxiety, however, unexpectedly acted as a protective buffer, softening the negative emotional reaction. In people with high levels of trait anxiety, the impact of acute stress on engagement turned out to be significantly weaker. According to