Auditory affective priming: The role of trait anxiety and stimulus type

To date, there has been relatively little research on the relationship between anxiety and music. Trait anxiety (TA) is known to modulate responses to threat-related stimuli, but it is unclear whether this is driven by differences or biases related to attention, vigilance avoidance, or information processing. We evaluated competing predictions based on Attentional Control Theory (ACT), Vigilance Avoidance, and the Information Processing model. We performed two affective priming tasks with auditory primes and word targets, comparing results for participants high in TA with participants low in TA. Music primes elicited congruency effects—targets were evaluated faster when preceded by a prime that shared the same valence as the target. However, TA did not influence responses. In the second task, which used affective environmental sounds, high TA was associated with slower responses to positive targets following a negative prime, consistent with the impaired processing efficiency predicted by ACT. We discuss the results in the context of theoretical models of anxiety and suggest possible stimulus properties, such as arousal and concreteness, which could explain the differences in results.