Exploring the landscape of psychological threat: A cartography of threats and threat responses

Over the recent years, research in the field of threat and defense has accumulated evidence on how encounters with various psychological threats influence human behavior, cognition, motivation, affect, and health. Unifying different theoretical threat models, the General Process Model of Threat and Defense claims that different threatening concerns have a similar underlying dynamic. Some years after the publication of this theory, we deem it important to take a comparative look at psychological threat, comparing threats regarding their properties and outcomes on personal and social level. As potential dimensions to describe psychological threats, we discuss the existential nature of concerns, phenomenological worlds involved, and thwarted needs in threat encounters. We also discuss data-driven approaches to threat classifications, describing first empirical efforts to create threat taxonomies, and suggest directions for future research. This research will enhance our understanding of threat dynamics, and will help us make stronger, more clear-cut assumptions about human behavior upon experiencing threat.

An Integrative Framework of Appraisal and Adaptation in Serious Medical Illness

Multiple randomized clinical trials have demonstrated that palliative care improves the quality of life of individuals with serious medical illness. Research also suggests that in patients with advanced cancer, palliative care's focus on symptom management, coping with illness, goals of care, and treatment decisions may be associated with improved patient quality of life in part by increasing patients' use of active (vs. passive) and approach-oriented (vs. avoidant) coping strategies. However, without a framework outlining the process that individuals with serious medical illness and their loved ones undergo, it is challenging to discern exactly where, how, and why palliative care may affect the serious medical illness experience. To address this gap, we propose a clinically applicable framework, derived from existing theory and research in the social and behavioral sciences. This framework, called the Integrative Framework of Appraisal and Adaptation in Serious Medical Illness, describes how patients and their loved ones cognitively and emotionally process the various events that may occur as they navigate serious medical illness and the end of life. The framework also describes how individuals and their loved ones use that event processing to determine next steps, while considering the impact of their surrounding external environment, their individual social roles, and their connections on this decision making. The framework presented in this article is intended to improve our ability to understand and care for individuals with serious medical illness and their loved ones, while stimulating further discussion and research to test and refine these ideas.

Lab- and Field-Based Approaches to Meaning Threats and Restoration: Convergences and Divergences

Two distinct approaches to meaning—experimental lab-based research on meaning and its maintenance in response to situational cues and observational field research on meaning-focused coping following highly stressful or traumatic situations—have both produced important insights into the mechanics underlying responses to meaning-relevant threats. It has been suggested that although these 2 approaches focus on different, specific aspects of meaning, they converge on common underlying phenomena. The present article considers how lab-based and field-based approaches align and diverge on their answers to 4 questions: (1) How is meaning defined in the context of meaning violation and restoration? (2) What are threats to meaning? (3) How do people respond to these threats? and (4) Why does meaning restoration matter? Our comparison of these lab- and field-based approaches suggests that they share considerable commonalities in conceptualization, but they diverge in important ways in terms of emphasis and empirical considerations. We conclude that lab- and field-based approaches to meaning violation and restoration may be focusing on the same phenomena studied at different levels, but with some qualitative differences, and we offer suggestions for how lab- and field-based approaches can better inform one another. Considering these two approaches conjointly provides a more holistic and comprehensive understanding of the fundamental phenomena of meaning threat and restoration.

Meaning in Life as Comprehension, Purpose, and Mattering: Toward Integration and New Research Questions

To advance meaning in life (MIL) research, it is crucial to integrate it with the broader meaning literature, which includes important additional concepts (e.g., meaning frameworks) and principles (e.g., terror management). A tripartite view, which conceptualizes MIL as consisting of 3 subconstructs—comprehension, purpose, and mattering—may facilitate such integration. Here, we outline how a tripartite view may relate to key concepts from within MIL research (e.g., MIL judgments and feelings) and within the broader meaning research (e.g., meaning frameworks, meaning making). On the basis of this framework, we review the broader meaning literature to derive a theoretical context within which to understand and conduct further research on comprehension, purpose, and mattering. We highlight how future research may examine the interrelationships among the 3 MIL subconstructs, MIL judgments and feelings, and meaning frameworks.

Toward an Integrative Theory of Psychological Defense

According to theories of "psychological defense," humans are motivated to protect themselves against various types of psychological threat, including death awareness, uncertainty, and other inherently anxiety-provoking experiences. Protective mechanisms include strengthening close relationships; maintaining appraisals of self-worth, accomplishment, and agency; and cultivating meaningful views of the world. Thus, defensiveness theories incorporate research from many areas of psychology (e.g., information-processing biases, attitudes, and interpersonal and intergroup relations), to help explain why people think, feel, and act in the diverse ways that they do. Currently, the study of psychological defense is hindered by contradictory empirical results and a proliferation of theories that make very similar predictions. This article examines a cross-section of defensiveness theories and research, highlighting conclusions that can be drawn and areas where conceptual and research problems linger. It suggests that the field needs methodological innovation (e.g., more reliable and valid manipulations and measures of unconscious constructs, more diverse methodological approaches), a more complete and reliable body of data, and some fresh new ideas from psychological scientists across disciplines.

The comfort of approach: self-soothing effects of behavioral approach in response to meaning violations

People maintain systems of beliefs that provide them with a sense of belongingness, control, identity, and meaning, more generally. Recent research shows that when these beliefs are threatened a syndrome of negatively valenced arousal is evoked that motivates people to seek comfort in their ideologies or other personally valued beliefs. In this paper we will provide an overview of this process and discuss areas for future research. Beginning with the neural foundations of meaning violations, we review findings that show the anterior cingulate cortex is responsible for detecting inconsistencies, and importantly, that this is experienced as aversive. Next, we evaluate the evidential support for a psychophysiological arousal response as measured by cardiography and skin conductance. We discuss how current theorizing proposes that subsequent behavioral approach ameliorates the negative arousal and serves as an effective, well-adapted coping response, but we also aim to further integrate this process in the existing threat-compensation literature. Finally, we speculate on whether approach motivation is likely to result when one feels capable of handling the threat, thereby incorporating the biopsychosocial model that distinguishes between challenge and threat into the motivational threat-response literature. We believe the current literature on threat and meaning has much to offer and we aim to provide new incentives for further development.

Extension of the Transdiagnostic Model to Focus on Intolerance of Uncertainty: A Review of the Literature and Implications for Treatment

This study reviews research on the construct of intolerance of uncertainty (IU). A recent factor analysis (Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 25, 2012, p. 533) has been used to extend the transdiagnostic model articulated by Mansell (2005, p. 141) to focus on the role of IU as a facet of the model that is important to address in treatment. Research suggests that individual differences in IU may compromise resilience and that individuals high in IU are susceptible to increased negative affect. The model extension provides a guide for the treatment of clients presenting with uncertainty in the context of either a single disorder or several comorbid disorders. By applying the extension, the clinician is assisted to explore two facets of IU, "Need for Predictability" and "Uncertainty Arousal."