Nathan L. Williams, Ph.D. Research Homepage

Research Interests

My research interests are centered on understanding vulnerabilities to anxiety disorders by systematically examining 4 central questions:

1. What factors constitute vulnerabilities to anxiety disorders?

2. What are the mechanisms by which such vulnerabilities operate?

3. To what extent are vulnerabilities specific to anxiety disorders?

4. In what ways can an increased understanding of vulnerabilities to anxiety disorders facilitate prevention and refined intervention efforts?

Vulnerabilities to Anxiety

Drawing on cognitive-behavioral theories of emotional disorders, social-cognitive theory, personality theories, and cognitive-experimental research and theory, the central theme of my research program is the investigation of vulnerabilities to anxiety. Vulnerability factors are trait-like variables that are present before disorders fully develop that can be conceptualized as relatively stable causal mechanisms that may confer increased risk to the development of anxiety disorders under certain conditions. Specifically, vulnerability factors are thought to operate in a diathesis-stress framework such that a given vulnerability may remain latent or dormant until activated by relevant environmental events or triggers. Once activated, such factors may influence the processing of threat-related information, the use of coping styles and strategies, the conditionability to threat stimuli, and/or the individual's engagement with his or her social support network. Recent research also highlights the reciprocal influence between vulnerability factors and environmental influences, and in so doing has begun to emphasize both the transactional nature of diathesis-stress interactions and the interactions between multiple vulnerability processes, environmental stressors, and developmental context.

My program of research investigates three specific types of vulnerabilities to anxiety disorders: 1) Cognitive Styles-- one's characteristic style of appraising and evaluating the environment; 2) Coping Styles-- one's characteristic style of functionally responding to appraisals of threat or danger; and 3) Adult Attachment Styles-- one's characteristic style of conceptualizing and interacting in romantic relationships. In addition, my program of research investigates the relationships between these vulnerabilities and psychological stress and negative life events.

The primary thrust of my research program is on cognitive vulnerability to anxiety-- specifically, the Looming Cognitive Style. The looming cognitive style (LCS) has been proposed as a broad and pervasive cognitive pattern to cross-situationally appraise threat as rapidly rising in risk, progressively worsening, or actively accelerating and speeding up (Riskind, 1997; Riskind et al., 2000; Williams et al., in press). The LCS is conceptualized as a schema-driven, evolutionarily-based process of threat/harm appraisal that is assumed to systematically bias the ways in which individuals mentally represent the temporal and spatial progression of possible future threat. Moreover, the LCS is posited to represent a unique cognitive risk factor for anxiety but not depression that functions as a danger schema (Riskind et al., 2000). The LCS is hypothesized to consist of primarily imagery-based mental representations of the developmental progression(s) of potential threat over time (i.e., dynamic fear-related imagery). Consequently, individuals who develop the LCS are likely to have difficulty habituating to potential threats, demonstrate increased vigilance and anxiety, perceive a sense of time-urgency and imperative need for action, and over-utilize cognitive and behavioral avoidance strategies (see Riskind & Williams, in press, for a review).

The LCS emerged from the "looming vulnerability" model of anxiety, which posits that the distinct cognitive phenomenology of anxiety and anxiety disorders involves mental representations of dynamically intensifying danger and rapidly rising risk (Riskind, 1997; Riskind et al., 2000). According to Riskind and colleagues (2000) a unique feature of the mental scenarios generated by anxious individuals is the perception of threat movement as still unfolding and intensifying as one projects the self into an anticipated future. All individuals are assumed to have the capacity to mentally represent or forecast how potentially threatening situations are likely to develop or play-out, as a product of our autonoetic consciousness (i.e., the uniquely human ability to represent past, present, and future; Wheeler et al.,1997). Cognitively vulnerable individuals, however, are assumed to develop mental representations in which anticipated threats are escalating in risk, moving toward the self or toward a dreaded final outcome, and moving through time (i.e., looming).

A number of cross-sectional, experimental, and prospective studies provide support for the LCS as a cognitive vulnerability to anxiety (see Riskind & Williams, in press, for a review). These studies indicate that cognitively vulnerable individuals, those high in the LCS, demonstrate higher levels of general anxious symptoms, as well as higher levels of several correlates of anxiety including worry, thought suppression, catastrophizing, and behavioral avoidance. In addition, a recent study provides evidence that the LCS is associated with increased levels of symptoms of PTSD, OCD, GAD, specific phobias, and social anxiety in a college student population (Williams et al., in press). Recent experimental studies have also demonstrated that individuals high in the LCS demonstrate attentional vigilance for threatening visual images, enhanced estimations of environmental threat, and a memory bias for threatening information, even when the effects of current levels of anxious symptoms are controlled.

Several studies also provide prospective evidence for the LCS as a distal vulnerability (i.e., cognitive diathesis) that interacts with stress (e.g., negative life events) to confer increased risk for anxiety symptoms and anxiety disorders. For example, a recent study provides evidence that the LCS interacts with negative life events to predict residual change in anxious symptoms over a two month time period (Williams, 2002). A growing body of studies also provides evidence for the applicability of the LCS to a variety of different anxiety disorders (see Riskind & Williams, in press, for a review). For example, heightened levels of the LCS have been found in patients with panic disorder, GAD, and social phobia, as well as analogue contamination phobics. At the same time, consistent evidence has been obtained for the discriminant validity of the LCS, suggesting that it is psychometrically and conceptually distinct from measures of trait-based negative affect (neuroticism, negative affectivity, and trait-anxiety), correlates of anxiety (worry, catastrophizing, and static appraisals of threat), and depressive symptoms. Thus, while research on the LCS is in its relative infancy, initial results for the specificity of this construct as a specific cognitive vulnerability to anxiety have been promising.