Behav. Res. Ther. Vol. 35, No. 8, pp. 685-702.

1997
Pergamon ~ 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
P I I : S0005-7967(97)00011-9 0005-7967/97 $17.00 + 0.00

INVITED E S S A Y

L O O M I N G V U L N E R A B I L I T Y TO T H R E A T : A COGNITIVE
P A R A D I G M FOR A N X I E T Y

J O H N H. R I S K I N D
Department of Psychology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, U.S.A.

(Received 8 January 1997)

Summary--The concept that perceived threat or danger is a cognitive antecedent of anxiety is central in
clinical psychology, personality psychology, and social psychology. The aim in the current article is to
review this concept and present a new conception called the looming vulnerabilitymodel. Looming vul-
nerability is conceptualized as an important cognitive component of threat or danger that elicits
anxiety, sensitizes the individual to signs of movement and threat, biases cognitive processing, and
makes the anxiety more persistent and less likely to habituate. In addition, it is postulated as a principal
theme that discriminates anxiety and focal fears from depression. The looming vulnerability model inte-
grates a disparate collection of findings and integrates the conceptualization of anxiety and fear with
ethological and developmental observations. The social-cognitive and evolutionary basis of the sense of
looming vulnerability are discussed, as well as its roots in cognitive schemata (fear scripts), its state eli-
citation by several potential classes of antecedent conditions, and possible treatment implications. ©
1997 Elsevier Science Ltd

The concept that perceived threat is a cognitive antecedent o f anxiety is central in clinical psy-
chology, personality psychology, and social psychology. F o r example, such a concept appears in
literature on anxiety disorders in the concept o f apprehensive expectation, in concepts related to
danger signals and fear conditioning ( R a c h m a n , 1977), behavior in response to warnings, and
psychology o f stress and coping (Lazarus & F o l k m a n , 1984). But what is threat or danger? M y
aim in the current article is to review this concept and present a new conceptualization which I
call the looming vulnerability model.

INTRODUCTION

M a n y different cognitive models o f anxiety exist, and no single one o f these can claim to be
all-superior in accounting for the p h e n o m e n o n o f anxiety. As Ellis and H u n t (1993, p. 10)
have said "ultimately all models in science are wrong. Very simply, a model is an analogy; it is
not identical to the thing to be studied". A l t h o u g h the current models have proven useful, the
looming vulnerability model was designed to offer new insight into the role o f time and antici-
p a t o r y threat in anxiety, and discrimination o f anxiety from depression. The new formulation is
useful because it both accounts for observations not dealt with by current models, as well as
makeing novel predictions a b o u t the antecedent conditions that elicit and sustain anxiety and
fear. The principal goals in this article are to briefly review and show a c o m m o n limitation o f
current cognitive models, present the looming vulnerability model and its evidence, then discuss
the origins o f the sense o f looming vulnerability, and some o f its practical and theoretical impli-
cations.

COGNITIVE THEORIES OF ANXIETY AND THREAT

The basic p a r a d i g m a d o p t e d by most cognitive theories o f anxiety, stress and fear is that the
cognitive p h e n o m e n o l o g y o f threat is responsible for evoking anxiety and fear. Variations on
685
686 John H. Riskind

this same basic theme have spread throughout the psychological and psychiatric literature, and
appear in the work of Lazarus on stress and coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), Bandura
(1982) on self-efficacy, Rotter (1966) on locus of control, Beck and Emery (1985) on cognitive
distortions in anxiety disorders, as well as in many other core formulations in the literature (e.g.
Carver & Scheier, 1990; Mandler, 1972). Each of those formulations have in common the idea
that cognitive appraisals (judgments) about a source of threat or danger are direct antecedents
of anxiety and fear.

A P P R A I S A L T H E O R Y : L A Z A R U S ( L A Z A R U S , 1966; L A Z A R U S & F O L K M A N ,
1984)
Richard Lazarus (1966) was one of the first modern theorists to propose the concept of
appraisal as essential to the study of anxiety, stress, and coping. Lazarus recognized that enor-
mous differences exist between individuals and groups in the extent to which they are sensitive
or vulnerable to stress produced by certain types of events (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984, p.22).
He further argued that in order to cope with threatening experiences when direct actions to alter
the situations were not feasible, people engage in certain ways of thinking about the threats
which often succeeded in lowering the intensity of the stress reaction.
Lazarus (1966) proposed two types of appraisal processes related to the perception of threat:
the primary appraisal that involves the judgment of a stimulus as threatening or benign, and the
secondary appraisal that represents an evaluation of the possible ways of coping with the threat
and the conditions relevant to coping (Lazarus, 1966). Once a primary appraisal of threat takes
place, priority is given to information dealing with possible lines of coping (secondary apprai-
sals). Lazarus proposed that direct actions to remove the threat may be aroused as tendencies or
impulses (e.g. fight, flight, or inaction responses meant to stave off the threat) by threat apprai-
sal and delineation of coping alternatives. When secondary appraisals suggest that no direct
action is possible, benign reappraisal may occur in which the situation is reassessed as less threa-
tening or non-threatening. Such reappraisal generally involves some distortion of reality and
function as a 'cognitive defense' against the perceived threat (although at times the reappraisal
may be accurate). Lazarus and Folkman (1984) describe several types of primary appraisals that
influence anxiety and stress, including: (1) imminence (or nearness of the threat object in time),
(2) probability of harm, (3) duration of threat (see Paterson & Neufeld, 1987 for a review of
empirical evidence supporting these factors).

L A C K OF C O N T R O L : R O T T E R (1966), M A N D L E R (1972) AND B A N D U R A (1982)

Although there are important differences between Rotter (1966), Mandler (1972) and Bandura
(1982), each of these theories has assigned special importance to the role of appraisals of lack of
control in anxiety. Bandura refers to this construct as self-efficacy. Substantial evidence has
accumulated suggesting that the belief or perception of no control over stressors is related to
anxiety (e.g. Watson, 1967). However, there is some reason to question the specificity of beliefs
in lack of control to anxiety since there is analogous evidence showing relationships of beliefs in
no control with depression (Benassi, Sweeney & Dufour, 1988; see also, Maddux, Riskind &
Lampert, 1996 on self-efficacy).

B E C K ' S C O G N I T I V E M O D E L OF P S Y C H O P A T H O L O G Y .
Beck's cognitive clinical model of emotional disorders (e.g. Beck, 1976; Beck & Clark, 1980)
was specifically proposed to apply to psychopathological anxiety. Beck's model proposes that
the conclusions and appraisals of people with psychopathology represent distortions of realistic
situations, and typically differ from normal ideational content which encompasses a reasonable
approximation of reality. In anxiety disorders, the ideational theme that is distorted or biased is
actual or future danger. Drawing on Lazarus' (1966) model, Beck and Emery (1985) proposed
that anxious individuals are cognitively biased to both: (1) perceive excessive threat or danger to
 Looming vulnerabilitymodel of anxiety 687

their survival (primary appraisal); and (2) underestimate their degree of control or effectiveness
in coping with this threat (secondary appraisal). Anxiety is evoked because such individuals
form exaggerated expectancies of the imminence, probability, and severity of threat (Beck, 1976)
and underestimate their resources for coping.
In Beck's cognitive framework, each anxiety disorder is identified with a different specific cog-
nitive content revolving around the ideational theme of threat. For example, in simple phobias,
the pathogenic cognitive content consists of distorted primary and secondary appraisals of the
threat stemming from the phobic object. In panic, the cognitive content revolves around cata-
strophic misinterpretations of bodily sensations. In social phobia the ideation centres on the
threat of public humiliation.

A L I M I T A T I O N OF T H E S E C U R R E N T C O G N I T I V E A P P R A I S A L M O D E L S
A major challenge that confronts cognitive formulations of anxiety and psychopathology is to
effectively discriminate the distinctive cognitive appraisals that discriminate anxiety and de-
pression from each other. But a limitation of existing theories in distinguishing anxiety and de-
pression is that they find it difficult to distinguish cognitive appraisal-biases and content
associated with anxiety from those associated with depression. Many studies indicate little differ-
ence between anxiety and depression in threat-related cognitive content (Butler & Mathews,
1983; Greenberg & Beck, 1989; Jolly, 1994; Riskind et al., 1991). For example, an early study
by Butler and Mathews found that generalized anxiety disorder and unipolar depression were
equally identified by exaggerated estimates of the future probabilities of negative events (such as
developing a heart condition). Jolly (1994) found that threat-related cognitions were as closely
associated with depression as anxiety, as did Riskind et al. (1991) in a clinical sample.
Greenberg and Beck (1989) found that threat-related words were recalled as often by depressed
clinical patients as by anxious ones. The same point of cognitive overlap is made by theories
that postulate that assessments of lack of personal control over aversive events (Mandler, 1972;
Seligman, 1975), and of the imminence of the events (e.g. Dobson, 1985; Lazarus & Folkman,
1984), play central roles in both anxiety and depression.
The inconsistencies emerging from studies seeking to distinguish cognitive content of anxiety
from that of depression echo those that researchers have found when trying to differentiate
anxiety from depression as syndromes (e.g. Barlow, 1991; Dobson, 1985; Klerman, 1988;
Riskind et al., 1991). Indeed, the difficulties in differentiating them could lead one to deduce
that anxiety is interchangeable with depression (e.g. Barlow, 1991). But most investigators and
clinicians continue to believe that it is useful to distinguish anxiety and depression as entities.
A tantalizing clue as to where to find the cardinal cognitive differences between anxiety and
depression is provided by the distinction in how they are usually defined. Anxiety is typically
deemed a 'mobilization' response to a threat situation that is developing and coming but that
can still (with some hope) be avoided. Depression, however, is a 'demobilization' response to a
static or unlikely-to-vary situation that can no longer (with any hope) be avoided because it has
already developed or come to pass (Riskind et al., 1991). Although it is true that mobilization
symptoms sometimes co-occur with depression, closer analysis usually confirms that the mobiliz-
ation (agitation) symptoms are actually due to their co-morbidity with anxiety (e.g. Barlow,
1991; Riskind et al., 1991).
This usual, common-sense distinction between anxiety and depression suggests that concepts
of time and rate-of-change might help to distinguish them.* However, beyond the impression
that anxiety is usually evoked by future threat and depression is evoked by past loss, minimal
efforts have been made to pursue these time-relational differences.

*Hopeless pessimism, as assessed in various ways, seems a depressivecharacteristicthat typicallydiscriminatesdepression

from other forms of specific or non-specificdistress (e.g. Beck, Riskind, Brown & Steer, 1988; Riskind, Castellon &
Beck, 1989). For example, hopelessness is usually better correlated with depression than anxiety, and higher in de-
pressed clinical patients than anxious ones (Beck et al., 1988). Yet, it is troubling to cognitive theories that no corre-
sponding anxiety-related appraisal characteristics have been found that typically discriminate anxiety from
depression.
688 John H. Riskind

T H E L O O M I N G V U L N E R A B I L I T Y F O R M U L A T I O N OF A N X I E T Y
The 'looming vulnerability' model affirms that an adequate cognitive model of fear must
include a description of the role played by the individual's perceptions of threat movement. The
person's perception of movement evokes fear because the movement of a threat can rapidly
increase the apparent physical or temporal proximity of that threat (such as a stinging insect, a
deadline, an illness, a social failure) to the self. The central meaning shared by these examples is
that there is a source of threat that is rapidly approaching or developing and can be likened to
a body in motion. This experience in which threat appears to our minds as a body in a state of
motion is at the core of the cognitive phenomenology of anxiety. The model maintains that the
person who appraises or experiences threats as rapidly growing or coming has a painful sense of
looming vulnerability to harm and becomes more anxious and threatened as a result.
In simple phobias, such as phobias of spiders or toxic-contaminants, far more-anxiety will be
elicited when the threat is regarded as ever-growing in danger as it is in motion surging, spread-
ing, evolving, or somehow moving through time/space and transformations to negative out-
comes. The sense of looming vulnerability will elicit greater anxiety without reference to
whether there is an actual looming threat or it is imaginary. In comparison, rather minimal
levels of anxiety will be elicited if that object is regarded as sitting inertly in one place.
Variations of this same basic theme of anxiety to a threat as a 'body in motion' appear
equally in more social-cognitive or abstract threats such as the fears of being rejected or finan-
cially ruined. In each case, the threat involved must move through intermediate points in time/
space along a logically predicated sequence to follow a course that ends in dreaded outcomes.
Sometimes, in fact, more than one path of development could be expected to produce the
dreaded outcome. For example, the anxious individual could see financial ruin as evolving down
several independent paths at about the same time: stocks and investments are declining in value,
while debt is increasing, and new expenses are rising. The end result of the confluence of move-
ments through time and physical transformations is a painful experience of looming vulner-
ability.
Several studies uphold the premise that individuals develop mental-model representations of
active or dynamic as well as static aspects of stimuli (e.g. Hsee & Abelson, 1991; Freyd &
Rinke, 1984). For example, in a social-cognitive context, it has been amply demonstrated that
they will react affectively to appraisals and thoughts concerning the rates of change (velocities)
of negative events (Hsee & Abelson, 1991; see also the theory of Carver & Scheier, 1990). If the
rates of change of negative events have effects on dissatisfaction (Hsee & Abelson, 1991), it is
plausible that analogous effects could apply to anxiety and fear.
The sense of looming vulnerability, then, is a hypothetical cognitive construct. The hypoth-
esized sense of looming vulnerability to a 'threat as a body in motion' can in part be due to per-
ceptions of the forward velocity of the threat and in part to perceptions of its acceleration. The
velocity is the instantaneous speed with which the threat is coming or moving through its path
of development; the acceleration is the extent to which the velocity itself seems to be increasing
in time. Both of these components (velocity and acceleration) can contribute to anxiety.
In many commonplace--but still hazardous--instances that can occur in everyday life, the
perceived trajectory and velocity of the threat object toward a dreaded outcome is determined
largely by objective stimulus properties. For example, y o u - - o r nearly any individual--will
become more anxious when spotting a freight train that is speeding toward you down the rail-
road tracks. Such an example illustrates the adaptive functions of the sense of looming vulner-
ability at certain times in everyday life. This point is compatible with the idea that mechanisms
behind many kinds of psychopathology have had evolutionary value (e.g. Cosmides & Tooby,
1994).
One experimental illustration of this proposition on looming vulnerability and the elicitation
of anxiety is provided by an experiment on spider phobia (Riskind, Kelly, Moore, Harman &
Gaines, 1992, Study 3). In this experiment, Ss viewed video presentations of tarantulas or rab-
bits either moving forward, moving backward, or standing still. Results provided strong support
for the thesis that the sense of looming vulnerability helps elicit anxiety and fear.
Experimentally induced perceptions of looming motion interacted with the type of animal on
 Loomingvulnerabilitymodelof anxiety 689

the filmclips. As predicted, the 'animal' main effect showing that the tarantulas elicited greater
anxiety than rabbits was by far the strongest when the animals in the video presentations
showed forward motion, and was less strong when they showed backwards motion or still
motion (see also, Riskind & Maddux, 1993). Experiments with a different methodology obtained
equivalent results for fears of the public of the psychiatrically ill (Riskind & Wahl, 1992).
In psychopathological instances of anxiety, the objective stimulus properties or 'reality infor-
mation' frequently fails to justify the sense of looming vulnerability. Indeed, the sense of loom-
ing vulnerability in some anxious individuals often seems to be elicited by the most
impoverished, or minimal of information. In such instances, the painful sense of looming vulner-
ability becomes a dominant mental lens by which the severely anxious person views the world
and represents an ingrained schema-driven cognitive bias. As already described by many cogni-
tive theories, I assume that individuals develop inner knowledge structures called cognitive sche-
mata to summarize and organize their past experiences with threat (Beck & Emery, 1985; Fiske
& Taylor, 1984). Such cognitive schemata provide mental filters or spectacles through which the
anxiety-prone person acquires and processes information. The effects of this biased processing
are insidious because they result in a 'confirmation bias' to see what was expected and thereby
produce further entrenchment of the original sense of looming vulnerability about the threat
object (Beck & Emery, 1985; Tomarken, Mineka & Cook, 1989). For example, it is held that
the anxious person will tend to verify the original sense of looming vulnerability that s/he starts
with, as well as to be more vigilant for threat-information, more likely to notice the slightest
occurrence of threat (and particularly, of threatening movement), and to give more weight to
threat information than would a non-anxious person.
Drawing on the foundation provided by general cognitive theory, then, my formulation posits
that the cognitive schemata of anxious individuals biases them to experience a sense of looming
vulnerability. As a result of their cognitive bias, they will tend to confirm the justification for
their painful sense of looming vulnerability by overestimating the extent to which the threats in
question are looming or rapidly coming to produce dreaded outcomes in comparison to non-
anxious individuals. Thus, they have a confirmation-bias that will lead them to experience the
painful sense of looming vulnerability that they were already cognitively predisposed to expect.
A pair of experiments using an illusory correlation paradigm tested the proposition that there
is a confirmation bias associated with anxiety that justifies a sense of looming vulnerability
(Riskind, Moore, Beebe, Karman & Albee, 1995). Low and high-fear women were exposed to
an illusory correlation paradigm in which they were shown filmclips of tarantulas or rabbits.
Filmclips showed the stimuli moving forward (or looming), moving backwards or as still, and
were randomly followed by recording presentations of aversive sounds, neutral sounds, or
silence. There were several illusory correlation phenomena predicted by the looming vulner-
ability model. The chief finding from the present standpoint, however, was that fearful Ss
tended to significantly overestimate the degree to which filmclips of tarantulas have shown for-
ward movement rather than other movement. In other words, the fear of spiders was associated
with a cognitive bias to overestimate their forward motion which would justify a sense of loom-
ing vulnerability to spiders.
According to the looming vulnerability model, individuals with a sense of looming vulner-
ability to threat subjectively experience the world in different qualitative terms than other indi-
viduals. For example, people will judge a higher amount of the threat to be coming at them in
the world, are more vigilant (qooking-out') for potential threat, worry more about possible
threats, and show greater behavior to avoid such circumstances, as well as other defensive beha-
vior to cope with/or prevent negative outcomes. The 'harm-looming' of threats regarded as
bodies in motion and coming closer through time/space gives a greater priority to the necessity
of finding means of coping to deal with them. To give an illustration from a different domain,
the person who fears that toxic contaminants are continuously spreading forward in a tide will
be more vigilant for them, worry more about them, and avoid potential contamination situ-
ations more, as well as engage in more hand washing.
Other logic of this new analysis leads to the additional hypothesis that people sustain anxiety
and fear longer if it is associated with a sense of looming vulnerability to threat objects. For both
theoretical and empirical reasons, it is likely that anxiety responses to threats that seem unvary-
690 John H. Riskind

ingly c o n s t a n t a n d p r e d i c t a b l e will tend to h a b i t u a t e a n d d i m i n i s h with time ( L a z a r u s &

F o l k m a n , 1984; for a review, see P a t e r s o n & Neufeld, 1987). M o r e o v e r , i n d i v i d u a l s will tend to
find w a y s to c o p e successfully with threats t h a t d o n o t vary o r are slow to change. Thus, if
t h r e a t objects o r feared stimuli are a p p r a i s e d as u n i f o r m , unvarying, a n d p r e d i c t a b l e , they will
tend to e v o k e m i n i m a l anxiety f r o m people. In c o n t r a s t , if the threats seem to be bodies in
m o t i o n t h a t are ever-varying, r e a r r a n g i n g a n d a d v a n c i n g to p r o d u c e negative o u t c o m e s , people
will stay sensitized to t h e m a n d feel m o r e urgently challenged to cope with them. A consequence
o f these differences is t h a t t h r e a t objects t h a t are associated with the p r o p o s e d sense o f l o o m i n g
v u l n e r a b i l i t y will h a b i t u a t e m o r e slowly a n d have m o r e sustained p o w e r to e v o k e a n d m a i n t a i n
anxiety. T o give a simple illustration, a spider p h o b i c s h o u l d h a b i t u a t e m o r e easily to a static
slide o f a spider t h a n a video clip o f a spider m o v i n g - - p a r t i c u l a r l y if it is m o v i n g f o r w a r d .
A n o t h e r h y p o t h e s i s t h a t is s t i m u l a t e d by the c u r r e n t m o d e l is t h a t a sense o f l o o m i n g vulner-
ability will influence fear c o n d i t i o n i n g a n d set limits on stimuli t h a t can be easily-conditioned.
T h e r e is s o m e r e a s o n to believe t h a t possible t h r e a t objects t h a t wiggle o r m o v e are m o v e easily
c o n d i t i o n e d . F o r example, C a r r (1969) suggested t h a t the a n i m a t e n a t u r e o f fear-relevant stimuli
such as spiders o r snakes distinguished t h e m f r o m o t h e r stimuli a n d is a ' c o n t r o l l i n g v a r i a b l e '
t h a t m e d i a t e s the i m p o r t a n c e o f these stimuli in p h o b i a s . A d d i t i o n a l l y , Seligman (1971) a l l u d e d
to the i m p o r t a n c e o f m o v e m e n t in his influential analysis o f biological p r e p a r e d n e s s . Referring
to T h o r n d i k e , he said:

Thorndike speculated that infants at the age of locomotion were more disposed to manifest fear to
objects that wiggle and contort themselves than to objects that are motionless CSs. (p. 410)

Thus, one intriguing i m p l i c a t i o n o f the present f o r m u l a t i o n is the suggestion t h a t the state o f

m o t i o n (such as the wriggling a n d crawling) a n d extent to which fear-relevant stimuli are ani-
m a t e will p l a y a role in the ' p r e p a r e d n e s s ' o f the stimuli for fear c o n d i t i o n i n g (e.g. Seligman,
1971; M i n e k a , 1987). R e l a t e d to this p r o p o s i t i o n , M c N a l l y a n d Steketee (1985) f o u n d evidence
in interviews o f a n i m a l p h o b i c s t h a t fear-stimulus m o v e m e n t often p l a y e d a role in fear acqui-
sition. T h e l o o m i n g v u l n e r a b i l i t y f o r m u l a t i o n predicts t h a t fear will be c o n d i t i o n e d m o r e r a p i d l y
to an a n i m a t e stimulus such as a spider that is a b o d y in m o t i o n a n d f o r w a r d - m o v i n g t h a n to
stimuli t h a t are i n a n i m a t e o r t h a t are receding. Clearly, m o r e analytic research is n e e d e d to test
the p r o p o s i t i o n s here.
T h e premise t h a t there is a d i s t i n c t i o n between the cognitive p h e n o m e n o l o g y o f l o o m i n g vul-
n e r a b i l i t y a n d t h a t o f o t h e r static cognitive a p p r a i s a l s is f u n d a m e n t a l to the l o o m i n g vulner-
ability m o d e l . A n i m p o r t a n t c o r o l l a r y is t h a t the sense o f l o o m i n g v u l n e r a b i l i t y is a
characteristic o f the p h e n o m e n o l o g y o f anxiety t h a t will distinguish it f r o m depression. T h e
m o d e l p r o p o s e s t h a t the sense o f l o o m i n g v u l n e r a b i l i t y is subjectively a bit like p l a y i n g / o r
r e p l a y i n g a m o v i e o r v i d e o t a p e o f a t h r e a t t h a t is c o m i n g - - a d y n a m i c object in m o t i o n that is
p o s s i b l y r a p i d l y - c h a n g i n g a n d r e a r r a n g i n g in time or space. T h u s the subjective sense o f l o o m i n g
v u l n e r a b i l i t y involves less o f a focus on specific j u d g m e n t s o f threat (such as a b o u t p r o b a b i l i t y )
d u r i n g a n y given u n v a r y i n g time, a n d m o r e on b o t h the p h e n o m e n o l o g y a n d m e n t a l fear-ima-
gery o f the t h r e a t object as c o m i n g r a p i d l y d o w n a t r a j e c t o r y t o w a r d s a d r e a d e d o u t c o m e . *

*Indeed, looming vulnerability is likely to be a salient element of the fear-imagery of the 'threat-that-is-coming" which is
associated with anxiety. The image of the threat/phobic object stored in memory contains an actively-approaching
stimulus that grows in danger for us. The validity of this proposition is illustrated by the following script which typi-
fies those which Lang (1984) has used to test his 'bioinformational' theory of fear-structure theory among simple pho-
bics: ~'I am in a wooded area when I see a large snake. It appears to be moving toward me. There's a diamond
pattern on its back. This could be a dangerous snake. My eyes jump in my head following a quick, sinuous move-
ment." As evident above, a sense of looming vulnerability seems to be a prominent part of fear scripts. Moreover,
the looming vulnerability analysis is differentiated from Lang's approach because it focuses on the perceived growth-
trends of the threat-object itself ("It appears to be moving toward me"). While Lang's theory, in contrast, is con-
cerned with the phobic person's responses as they are represented in fear structure (e.g. "My eyes jump in my
head..."). It would take us too far afield in the current article to examine in detail the specific links between looming
vulnerability, fear imagery, and worry. It can be briefly indicated that looming vulnerability figures in both fear ima-
gery and worry, although it may influence them in different ways. For example, fear imagery corresponds to the pri-
mary appraisal of the moving threat, whereas worry corresponds to the secondary appraisal of ways to prevent the
dreaded outcome. As such, to the extent that worry is a systematic way of reducing anxiety and contact with fear
imagery, it will in turn eventually tend to reduce the experience of threat.
 Looming vulnerability model of anxiety 691

In contrast, the cognitive phenomenology tapped by other cognitive appraisal models (e.g.
Beck & Emery, 1985; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) could be likened to the phenomenology of
photographs of static objects at rest--only static aspects of the threat are represented at a frozen
or artificially arrested moment. As such, these cognitive models are missing a depiction of the
phenomenology of threat as a body in motion that is actively coming and instantaneously grow-
ing. The postulate of the present analysis is that the sense of looming vulnerability is a more effi-
cient way to identify the core cognitive content in anxiety which evokes the mobilization and
defensive or coping responses.
It is helpful to briefly describe how the sense of looming vulnerability is typically assessed.
Instead of focusing on typical aspects of threat (such as the probability of harm), looming vul-
nerability questions focus on threat as a body in motion. In most studies it is assessed by ques-
tions such as "How rapidly is the threat of ~X' growing?" or "How quickly is 'X' becoming
more dangerous?". Recently, we have developed a reliable coding procedure to assess looming
vulnerability by content analysis of verbatim material such as that extracted from diaries or
interview transcripts (see Riskind, in press b). Thus, this procedure parallels content analysis
techniques developed to assess depressive explanatory patterns (Peterson & Seligman, 1984).
A series of studies have empirically verified the postulate of the model that the sense of loom-
ing vulnerability can be differentiated from appraisals of other aspects of threat. These studies
have examined cognitive appraisal variables that predict fear of spiders (Riskind et al., 1992,
Studies 1 & 2), fears of HIV (Riskind & Maddux, 1994), syndromal anxiety and worry in clini-
cal patients (Riskind, 1996), fears of looming disappointment and rejection in social anxiety
(Maddux et al., 1996) and fears of contamination in participants with subclinical OCD
(Riskind, Abreu, Straus & Holt, in press a). In the latter study, for example, undergraduate par-
ticipants in a subclinical obsessional group had a far higher sense of looming vulnerability to
spreading contamination than did those in a control group. A chief finding was that the subjec-
tive sense of looming vulnerability still had separate, distinct and significant contributions to
fear-of-contamination symptoms, with the effects of cognitive appraisals of other aspects of
threat (such as probability of harm, lack of control, imminence) removed. In contrast, these
other cognitive appraisals had no significant associations with symptoms that proved to be inde-
pendent of the subjective sense of looming vulnerability. Equivalent results were obtained in
other studies. Taken together, the hypothesized differentiation between the sense of looming vul-
nerability and other cognitive appraisals has been uniformly supported. A related conclusion is
that the sense of looming vulnerability contributes independent variance to predicting anxiety
when effects of neuroticism are removed (Riskind, in press a).
To elaborate the latter points, it is critical to distinguish between looming vulnerability and
imminence (the temporal distance or closeness of an event at a given moment). Research find-
ings (e.g. Riskind et al., 1992; Riskind, in press a) serve to show that the effects of looming vul-
nerability are largely independent of the contributions of imminence. A little thought further
reveals that there are important conceptual differences between these constructs, despite their
obvious overlap as temporal concepts. For example, a threat object (such as a hereditary cancer)
can be seen as rapidly evolving or looming (on the horizon) but still far from about to occur or
on one's 'front porch'. Conversely, the threat object can be imminent and about to occur but
have moved very slowly on a path towards a negative outcome. Because the constructs both
address aspects of threats coming through time, they will correlate closely--much like height
and weight. Yet imminence and the sense of looming vulnerability are still conceptually distinct,
and data uniformly verifies that there is a distinction between them (e.g. Riskind et al., 1992).
For reasons mentioned, then, it is avowed that the sense of looming vulnerability can be dif-
ferentiated from other appraisals of threat. Nevertheless, the formulation does stipulate a link in
the form of a partial dependency of these other cognitive appraisals on the sense of looming vul-
nerability. Put in different terms, one of the implications of the proposition that the sense of
looming vulnerability to threat elicits anxiety is that it will heighten appraisals of the magnitude
of other aspects of threat. Thus, the individual will perceive dreaded outcomes as being more
probable, imminent, and difficult to control when they seem to be an object in motion that is
rapidly coming or growing (for evidence, see Riskind et al., 1992).
692 John H. Riskind

A relevant illustration that offers support for this principle is provided by the previously men-
tioned experiment which presented Ss with video presentations of both tarantulas and rabbits
(Riskind et al., 1992, Study 3). The dependent variables in this study included measures of
appraisals of the probability and imminence of harm and of lack of control. As predicted, the
induced perception of looming movement heightened the Ss appraisals of the threat posed by
the tarantula. Forward moving tarantulas produced higher judgments that harm was probable,
imminent, and difficult to control than no movement or receding movement. In addition, this
predicted effect of the manipulation of looming motion was far stronger for the high fear Ss
than for the low fear Ss, which again illustrates the idea that psychopathological anxiety is as-
sociated with an exaggerated cognitive bias (high fear Ss presumably had more elaborated sche-
mata for fear of spiders). In short, the manipulation of looming vulnerability had correlated
effects on appraisals of other aspects of threat (such as probability or imminence of harm) as
well as on anxiety.
Coupled with these effects, the present model proposes that a part of the effects of the subjec-
tive sense of looming vulnerability on anxiety may be indirect and mediated via correlated effects
it has on other cognitive appraisals. That is, a subjective sense of looming vulnerability will
heighten other aspects of the appraisal of threat (such as probability) which in turn will heighten
anxiety. Evidence for such an indirect mediated pathway as well as the direct pathway in which
a sense of looming vulnerability leads to anxiety has been found in several recent cross-sectional
studies using causal modeling (e.g. James & Brett, 1984) or path analysis (Riskind et al., 1992;
Riskind & Wahl, 1992; Riskind & Maddux, 1994; Suttenfield, Riskind & Holt, 1996).

G E N E R A L I T Y AND S P E C I F I C I T Y OF THE L O O M I N G V U L N E R A B I L I T Y
FORMULATION
The current analysis assumes that each form of anxiety or fear is associated with its own
characteristic sense of looming vulnerability. This sense of looming vulnerability serves as a
major determinant of the anxiety or fear itself. Thus, each individual will be prone to experience
a focal sense of looming vulnerability in relation to any specific threat objects or events that s/he
fears, without reference to whether there is looming vulnerability in other domains.
The upshot is that the sense of looming vulnerability has specificity to each form of anxiety
or fear, in much the same way as Beck's cognitive model does (e.g. Beck & Emery, 1985). For
example, if the person is chronically fearful or phobic of spiders, s/he will have a schema-driven
sense of focalized looming vulnerability in relation to spiders; s/he will experience them as bodies
in forward motion, even when they are utterly motionless. However, this person will not necess-
arily experience a sense of looming vulnerability in relation to other focal threat objects, such as
toxic-contaminants, anxiety symptoms themselves (as in 'fear of fear'), or social rejections. In an
analogous way, if the person has fear of fear, s/he will have a schema-driven sense of focalized
looming vulnerability in relation to feared anxiety symptoms (see Riskind, Chambless & Holt,
1997), but will not necessarily experience any comparable looming vulnerability in relation to
spiders or social rejections.
Numerous studies from our research program have yielded a remarkably consistent set of
results supporting these aspects of the model. Several studies have found evidence that phobic
individuals exaggerate the extent to which their feared stimuli (such as spiders or germs) are
ever changing or rearranging and advancing or moving rapidly forward towards them (Riskind
et al., 1992; Riskind & Maddux, 1993; Riskind & Maddux, 1994; Riskind, Moore & Bowley,
1995; Riskind & Wahl, 1992). For example, spider phobics exhibit a bias to imagine spiders as
growing threats that are rapidly coming/moving toward them. Individuals with subclinical OCD
and moderately severe fears of contamination have a sense of looming vulnerability specific to
germs and other contaminants, imagining them as rapidly spreading closer to them (Riskind, in
press a).
Comparable associations exist between a sense of looming vulnerability and fears of Auto-
Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS (Riskind & Maddux, 1994), and fears of the public for
psychiatric patients (Riskind & Wahl, 1992), fears of weight gain by individuals with subclinical
 Looming vulnerability model of anxiety 693

eating disorders (described in Riskind, in press a), fears of reinjury by individuals with chronic
pain (Suttenfield et al., 1996), fears of looming disappointment and rejection by socially anxious
individuals (Maddux et al., 1996) and fears of performance mistakes by professional musicians
(Riskind & Mizrahi, 1997). For example, undergraduates with subclinical eating disorders and a
'fear of fat' imagine a looming threat of calories being converted rapidly to fat after consuming
food. Patients suffering from chronic pain have a sense of looming vulnerability to pain and
reinjury (Suttenfield et al., 1996). Moreover, professional musicians fear that the possibilities of
making a mistake and losing control of their performance are rapidly growing or coming.
In a less tightly constrained connection, individual differences in dispositions to generalized
anxiety are related to a broadened tendency to experience a more diffuse or generalized sense of
looming vulnerability in relation to multiple f o c i in common areas of experience. For instance,
the person who is generally anxious may experience a sense of looming vulnerability in relation
to the typical domains associated with worry and apprehensive expectation related to general
anxiety (e.g. Beck & Emery, 1985). Therefore, the anxious individual might experience a subjec-
tive sense of looming vulnerability in relation to threat objects such as possible rejections or
physical injury, but not necessarily for specific focal stimuli such as spiders or anxiety symp-
toms. Results of two studies have found that individuals who are phobic of specific focal stim-
u l i - s p i d e r s - w i l l perceive looming vulnerability in the dangers they typically fear but not in
other dangers. Conversely, individuals who are generally anxious in mood will perceive looming
vulnerability in dangers which are related to general anxiety but will not do so in the case of spi-
ders (Riskind et al., 1992, Studies 1 and 2).
Another key proposition related to theoretical specificity is that the subjective sense of loom-
ing vulnerability is a part of the thinking content of anxiety and focal fear that will distinguish
these from depression. In contrast to anxiety states, depression--which is usually deemed a reac-
tion to past events that have already arrived--will usually not be positively related to a sense of
looming vulnerability, and may even be negatively related to a sense of looming vulnerability.
The proposition that a subjective sense of looming vulnerability is a specific cognitive charac-
teristic of anxiety is indirectly suggested by studies of other investigators, which were indepen-
dent of the current model. For example, studies using the semantic differential reported an
ancillary finding that 'test anxious' students rate the concept of tests as higher on the 'activity'
axis of the semantic differential of Osgood et al. (1957) than non-test phobic students (e.g.
Galassi et al., 1981). A link between target concepts and activity ratings could be expected to
result if anxiety is related to a heightened readiness to affix activity, rapid change, and forward
movement or other cues associated with bodies in motion and looming vulnerability to target
concepts. Such a cognitive bias will be liable to occur if cognitive schemata related to looming
vulnerability are highly accessible to anxious individuals and provide mental filters or lenses
through which they look on the world and process and interpret experiences.
Consistent with my present logic, it is interesting to note that Costello and Comrey (1967)
found that college students who were high in anxiety rated a variety of target concepts as higher
in activity on the semantic differential. Of particular importance from my standpoint here, they
found no equivalent results for college students who were high in depression. Two studies by
Ruehlman and colleagues found significantly lower activity ratings for target concepts by de-
pressed individuals than non-depressed 'normal' individuals (Karoly & Ruehlman, 1983;
Ruehlman, 1985). If cognitive schemata linked to looming vulnerability typically dominate the
processing that occurs during anxiety, it would be expected that potential hints of their oper-
ation and content may also be manifested in some instances in the associative responses Ss
make to projective tests. In line with my present analysis, it is intriguing that Rorschach studies
find that anxiety-eliciting situations are accompanied with heightened reports of perceptions of
animate and inanimate movement in inkblots. Depression, on the other hand, is not ac-
companied by these tendencies (Exner, 1993).
A series of studies from our research laboratory have provided more direct support for the
proposition of the model that looming vulnerability differentiates anxiety from depression. For
example, several studies obtained evidence that the sense of looming vulnerability is correlated
with measures of anxiety even after the effects of depression are partialled. However, the sense
of looming vulnerability is unrelated with depression after the effects of anxiety are partialled
694 John H. Riskind

(Riskind et al., 1992, Studies 1 and 2; Riskind, 1996). One experiment (described in detail in
Riskind, in press a) examined the events that individuals generate when asked to give examples
of events that elicit anxiety and depression. The looming vulnerability model predicts that the
events that people generate for anxiety-eliciting events will usually contain looming movement
and qualities linked with rapidly moving through time--such as those of speed, activity, and
rapidity of approach. On the other hand, the events that people generate for depression or sad-
ness will usually contain slow movement and little change and concern aversive that are already
past.
Half of the undergraduate student Ss in this experiment described three events in writing that
generated anxiety and then did the same for three events that generated depression or sadness;
and half of the Ss described events that generated depression and then events that generated
anxiety. The Ss then rated the events on a list of attributes (e.g. 'Involves fast action', 'Involves
the future') on 0-5-point scales for how 'typical' they were of the events. The results confirmed
the predictions: looming threat movement and active or kinetic properties of bodies in forward
motion were rated as far more typical of events generated for anxiety than events generated for
depression. Slow movement, and the occurrence of events in the past, were rated as more typical
of events generated for depression.

L O O M I N G M A L A D A P T I V E STYLE
Further confirmation of the proposition that looming vulnerability differentiates anxiety from
depression will be presented now in conjunction with the hypothesis that there is a so-called gen-
eralized 'looming maladaptive style'. The 'looming' maladaptive cognitive style is conceptualized
to function as an antecedent vulnerability or risk factor for anxiety. The crux of the looming
maladaptive style is that it samples people's tendencies to appraise dangers as bodies in motion
that are rapidly evolving, developing, or coming with time. For example, the looming maladap-
tive style might make people worry when hearing an odd sound in their car on the highway that
its engine block is rapidly cracking, or its tire treads are peeling, its fan belts cracking, and so
on. In much the same way, the style might make them worry from the slightest signs that their
personal relationships or the basis for their job security is rapidly fraying or breaking apart.
The looming maladaptive style would bias persons to experience even long-identified or constant
threat conditions as acute, varying, and coming nearer to harming them. So it will theoretically
be more difficult for the person to habituate, even to ongoing and consistent problems, and s/he
will be more inclined to be habitually vigilant, and so forth.
Several past studies and recent results highlight three basic points concerning the looming
maladaptive style: (1) the looming maladaptive style can be distinguished from other cognitive
appraisals or judgments of threat; (2) the looming maladaptive style is distinct in that it is
specific to the signs and symptoms of anxiety and discriminates anxiety from depression; and (3)
the looming maladaptive style has a directional causal relationship to anxiety, worry and vigi-
l a n c e - t h e experience of threat as a body in motion is a cognitive antecedent that precedes and
predicts anxiety in time, and is not its result.
The present model posits a possible parallel between cognitive styles for anxiety and for de-
pression (Abramson, Seligman & Teasdale, 1978; Peterson & Seligman, 1984). The looming vul-
nerability model was formulated as an anxiety-specific maladaptive cognitive style that will fill
the same theoretical niche for anxiety as the pessimistic or depressive explanatory style does for
depression. Thus, each of the maladaptive styles is viewed as distinctively applicable to its own
specific affect-related disorder.
In theoretical terms, the anxiety-relevant looming maladaptive style is presumably activated
during an anticipatory period before a bad event has struck, following the first signs of possible
future threats that might be coming or evolving. In contrast, the depressive pessimistic explana-
tory style is activated after the blow has actually struck, when the person seeks retroactively to
interpret the meaning of past events--which have already arrived (Fig. 1).
Evidence has been obtained for a directional sequence with longitudinal studies, of the same
kind used to support the attributional model of depression (Riskind, in press a; Riskind, 1996).
 Looming vulnerability model of anxiety 695

Before After the

the ~ stressful
stressful event
event has
has struck
struck

The looming The pessimistic

maladaptivestyle explanatorystyle
is activated is activated

Threat, worryand Hopelessness,

anticipatoryanxiety rumination,and reactive
depression
Fig. 1. Proposed cognitive specificity of styles to affective reactions of anxiety and depression.

S I T U A T I O N / S T A T E E L I C I T A T I O N S : A N T E C E D E N T C O N D I T I O N S OF
LOOMING VULNERABILITY
We now turn to considering three general classes of antecedent conditions that seem to con-
tribute to momentary or situational state-elicitations of looming vulnerability. These include: (1)
movement, activity, or actional properties of the threat object; (2) other stimulus properties such
as stimulus intensity and changes in stimulus intensity; and (3) activation of appropriate cogni-
tive scripts.
The fii-st class of antecedent conditions for the state-elicitation of looming vulnerability is pre-
dicted because signs of movement, development or ongoing transformation of a threat object
down a path to dreaded outcomes are an enabling condition for fear scripts. In other words,
such factors are a precondition for the causally connected chain of events in scripts that are
usually required to evoke fear. Testing this prediction, Ss in one experiment (Riskind, in press
a), were told to rate hypothetical situations that they read, and half of the Ss were given
descriptions of five situations (e.g. a contagious disease, a wasp in the back of one's car on the
freeway, a mugger) in which a threat was highly active (e.g. it moved a lot, or moved quickly).
The other half were given descriptions in which the threat was low in activity. The results from
the experiment confirmed the predictions derived from the looming vulnerability formulation.
Significantly higher levels o f anxiety and fear were observed when the threats were described as
highly active than when they were low in activity. For example, Ss reported more fear of a
wasp that wiggled its antennae or wings because they could more easily view it as a body in
motion and anticipate it coming and stinging them. In addition, the level of manipulated activity
had robust, reliable effects on other measures of somatic components of anxiety (e.g. tension,
heartrate), vigilance, the sense of urgency, and cognitive variables such as expected likelihood o f
harm, unpredictability and uncontrollability.
The second class of antecedent conditions refers to other stimulus properties, aside from
movement, that could contribute to a sense of looming vulnerability. Little is now known about
such factors, but it is assumed that intense stimulus qualities such as bright or vivid colors or
loud sounds serve as cues for looming vulnerability. In addition, the perception of rapidly
increasing intensities of stimulus properties of threat objects will be particularly likely to increase
states of looming vulnerability (for example, increases in the intensity of sounds linked to a
possible threat). This hypothesis, incidentally, is quite compatible with the view of Tomkins
(1981), the emotions theorist, that rapid increases in rates of neural stimulation are related to
the fundamental emotion of fear.
The third class of antecedent conditions involves schemata (script) activation. State elicitation
of a sense of looming vulnerability will occur far more strongly when individuals possess elabo-
rated schemata or scripts o f the sequence from the threat object to dread outcome. In one
simple demonstration experiment (described in Riskind, in press a) that tested this propositions,
Ss were asked to make appraisals about potential threats (such as having a neck tumor discov-
696 John H. Riskind

ered, being in an elevator with a strange man in an isolated building late the evening) that were
labeled either as 'dangerous' or 'harmless'. Half of the Ss were told to rate six situations which
were described as dangerous, and the other half to rate the same situations described as harm-
less. After each hypothetical situation was read, Ss rated threat and fear on scales.
Several different dependent measures assessing the sense of looming vulnerability were
assessed, and all supported the same conclusion. Simply labeling a situation as 'dangerous' or
hazardous leads Ss to infer that the respective stimulus is more highly active, energetic, quickly
acting, and physically mobile, than labeling it as 'harmless'. Thus, simply conveying to people
that a potential threat object is 'dangerous' or 'safe', leads them to make corresponding infer-
ences about looming vulnerability. Further support for these findings comes from data from the
video presentation experiment of Riskind et al. (1992, Study 3) showing that Ss regarded taran-
tulas as more active and 'looming' than rabbits, particularly when the Ss were high in fear of
spiders. Thus, a sense that threat is a body in motion seems inherent to danger schemata.

C O G N I T I V E S C H E M A T A AND C O G N I T I V E S C R I P T S IN F E A R S T R U C T U R E
The expanded view that I put forward now is that whether any individuals interpret a poten-
tial threat object as threatening (during 'its meaning analysis') depends on the extent they are
able to understand the object to be a body in motion by seeing it as a 'part of a stored pattern
of actions' (cf. Schank & Abelson, 1977) that they expect will lead to harm. Anxiety and fear
are in part dependent on having knowledge structures that enable the person to make sense of
the threat object as a body in motion.
In the strictest sense, such knowledge structures are not the generic cognitive schemata incor-
porated in Beck and Emery's (1985) cognitive theory. In formal terms, most generic schemata
consist of purely abstract propositions about objects, and are more linked to semantic memory
(e.g. dogs are mammals and have fur) than episodic memory (dogs have painfully bitten me).
As argued by social-cognitive theorists Schank and Abelson (1977), affective reactions and
emotions are likely to be linked more strongly to cognitive scripts which are stored in episodic
memory. Scripts are more concerned with self-referent experiences and past or expected out-
comes. If we accept Schank and Abelson's arguments, the hypothetical construct of cognitive
scripts is a more useful and apt description of the knowledge structures involved in anxiety and
fear.
According to the present paradigm, anxiety and fear are guided by cognitive scripts (Fiske &
Taylor, 1984; Schank & Abelson, 1977). Scripts are abstract summaries of patterns of action
stored in episodic memory. As such, they serve as mental vehicles by which time can be symbo-
lized and stereotypic chains of events that are temporally-organized and causally connected can
be represented. For example, a 'restaurant script' is a stored pattern of actions in memory that
helps persons to understand the sequence of events (being seated, speaking to a waiter, ordering)
that are entailed in eating in a restaurant. Scripts guide human information processing with
'sequence rules' that summarize the sequential organization of events into causally connected
steps or chains, and thereby allow understanding as well as the possibility of making plans to fa-
cilitate or avert the possible outcomes that a chain of events can result in. For example, with a
restaurant script: (1) we know that food can be anticipated after ordering; and (2) that ordering
food from a waiter is required as a precondition before we can obtain food. Such structures
allow us to understand and behave effectively in the restaurant setting. In contrast, a cognitive
fear-script has sequence rules that allow the person to anticipate the forward movement of a
threat-that-is-coming through a causally connected chain of events required to result in dreaded
outcomes (such as being financially ruined, or bitten by a tarantula).
Several particularly significant features of cognitive fear scripts can be noted:
1. Scripts are activated by entry conditions that match the initial circumstances required for
invoking the script (such as the sight of a spider). For example, in the study above, the entry
condition was the appraisal (experimental suggestion) that the circumstances posed danger.
2. Scripts can be regarded as having paths of development and velocities towards the outcomes.
Moreover, they are responsible for filling in obvious information that has been left out of a
 Looming vulnerabilitymodel of anxiety 697

story or piece of a causally connected event sequence. For example, individual differences
and variation within the individual for different scripts will be related to differences in the
extent that movement through the sequence is fast, slow, or interrupted before they reach
dreaded scripted outcomes. Thus, fear scripts that guide anxiety feature a trajectory of events
towards negative outcomes and potential individual differences and variation in the extent
that threat is a body in motion towards negative outcomes.
3. Anxious individuals (or rather, anxiety-prone ones) have highly rehearsed and elaborated
fear scripts that provide a foundation for a sense that threat is a body in motion and looming
vulnerability; for example, spider phobics spontaneously imagine forward moving spiders
that their scripted sequence rules require for the negative outcome. Or, as another, anxious
people who see a minor financial problem will tend to imagine many paths by which this
could lead to ruin.
4. Non-anxious individuals have less rehearsed and elaborate fear scripts; moreover, the link
between entry conditions to negative outcome is broken by absence of bridging by sequence
conditions; for example, non-phobic/non-anxious individuals will not spontaneously imagine
a forward-moving spider, or a causally connected sequence by which a minor financial pro-
blem will lead to ruin. As a result, they have low anxiety.

E V O L U T I O N A R Y A N D S O C I A L - C O G N I T I V E O R I G I N S OF T H E SENSE OF
LOOMING VULNERABILITY
This article has proposed the view that looming vulnerability is different than other aspects of
appraisal as well as general neuroticism. In this final section, we now briefly consider several
added issues about its origins. The looming vulnerability model assumes that the anxiety re-
sponse to bodies in motion has an evolutionary basis as well as a social-cognitive origin. So we
now in turn describe each of these sources of the sense of looming vulnerability.
Evolutionary basis
From the standpoint of evolutionary psychologists (Cosmides & Tooby, 1994), it is important
for psychology theories to make 'evolutionary sense' about the specific problems that cognitive
mechanisms were designed to solve. For example, Cosmides and Tooby argue that evolutiona-
rily rigorous theories of adaptive function are necessary because the 'architecture of the human
mind' and its functional organization were evolved. It seems plausible that the sense of looming
vulnerability to threatening bodies in motion was first evolved as a mechanism in anxiety to
insure survival by helping animal species to avoid approaching predators (for a related view see
Rachman & Cuk, 1992).
This point seems to have been nicely foreshadowed, in a somewhat different context, by early
social-cognitive theorist Charles Osgood (1969):
Organisms without other specialized adaptive mechanisms (e.g. armor, coloration, poisons, etc.) which
were unable to represent for themselves the good versus bad implications of the signs of things (ante-
lope versus saber-toothed tiger), the strong versus weak of things (saber-toothed tiger versus mosquito)
and the quick versus slow of things (saber-toothed tiger versus quicksand) would have little chance of
survival. (p. 195; italics added
We can argue for the evolutionary basis of a link between looming vulnerability and anxiety
in an analogous way that Darwin argued for the evolutionary basis of emotions. Darwin
advanced three substantive arguments for the innateness of emotions including the fact that
there is: (1) species-wide evidence of emotion; (2) continuity with human emotions; (3) obser-
vations of emotion in young children; and (4) cross-cultural consistency of emotion expressions.
The view that is put forward here is that a link between a sense of looming vulnerability and
anxiety has survival value. Moreover, the link between looming stimuli and anxiety/fear is
observed in many species and those have continuity with human reactions. As an example, the
human reaction to a sense of looming vulnerability that is purely social-cognitive imagined
(such as the fear of performance mistakes in social anxiety) has continuity to and/is related to
the movements of crabs or fish that scuttle backwards when they see a shadow moving toward
698 John H. Riskind

them. Another Darwinian argument for the evolutionary basis of the link between looming vul-
nerability and anxiety is that it is observed in human infants as well as adults. Although no
direct cross-cultural evidence is available, there seems reason to assume that the link is found
world wide in humans.

Developmental and ethological evidence

We now examine the evidence for these evolutionary arguments in more detail. We start with
the empirical link between looming vulnerability and fear that is observed in many species. For
example, ethological studies show that many species of animals including crabs (Schiff, Caviness
& Gibson, 1962), hens (Evans, Macedonia & Marler, 1993), rats (Westby, 1990), fish (Dill,
1990), and non-human primates, both young and adult (King & Covey, 1992; Schiff et al., 1962)
automatically react to looming or optically expanding stimuli with focal fear and defensive
behaviors (such as ducking, crouching, or hiding).
The reactions of other animal species have continuity with human reactions. Adults and
infants respond to unfamiliar objects that approach them (or grow rapidly in size) with fear, agi-
tation, and defensive head movements characteristic of avoidance (King, Dykeman, Redgrave &
Dean, 1992; Ball & Tronick, 1971). An analogous point is made for a more social stimulus by
developmental studies. They report that children react with greater stranger-anxiety to unfami-
liar persons who approach them rapidly rather than slowly (Reingold & Eckerman, 1973;
Trause, 1977). Despite the many obvious differences across numerous animal species, these ob-
servations share in common the principle that potential threat objects which are regarded as
bodies in motion that are rapidly approaching or unfolding elicit greater fear and defensive
behavior.
Converging with these ethological data are findings from micro-analyses of the brain at the
cellular level. Such findings show that there are continuities between human beings and other
animals in their having innate equipment and neurological capabilities for detecting looming
movement. For example, several studies have documented distinct brain centres which are
specialized for perception of bodies in motion and looming visual stimuli (e.g. Wang, Jiang &
Frost, 1993). Visual detectors for looming stimuli have been detected in gray squirrels
(Blakeslee, Jacobs & McCourt, 1985), rats (Westby, 1990), fish (Dill, 1990), and humans (Regan
& Beverley, 1978). Indeed human beings seem in fact to possess two classes of neurons that are
selectively sensitive to increasing and decreasing size.
The emphasis that the looming vulnerability model places on how people construe bodies in
motion is compatible with the fact that, in general, the perceptual and the nervous systems
(Gibson, 1979) detect changes in things rather than static things. Indeed, at the neural level,
receptors require change for their synapses to fire. Further, as we have seen, people tend to ha-
bituate to stressors that are predictable and undergo little change (Katz & Wykes, 1985;
Paterson & Neufeld, 1987). It is also intriguing that, in the emotions literature it is believed that
emotional experiences such as fear are triggered by changes in events rather than unchanging
events (Ortony, Clore & Collins, 1988; Stein & Levine, 1987). Perhaps for similar reasons, work
in the human factors literature has begun to emphasize the importance of having workers moni-
tor the dynamic, ever changing features of performance settings, which they call 'situational
awareness' (Endsley, 1995).
Social-cognitive basis
We turn now to the next question about the social-cognitive basis of the sense of looming vul-
nerability-how do people acquire a subjective sense of looming vulnerability from learning ex-
periences? Insofar as the sense of looming vulnerability is cognitively mediated by cognitive
scripts, we can assume that it is developed to summarize, temporally organize, and sequence the
causality of past experiences. A variety of such experiences could contribute. First, both fear in
general and the sense of looming vulnerability in particular would seem to be developed from
modeling. For example, it would seem plausible that young children will model the fearful atti-
tudes of their parents. In addition, the subjective sense of looming vulnerability could be devel-
oped from past experience and distorted interpretations of that experience. A recent experiment
has verified, for example, that individuals who have had personal experience with the threat of
 Looming vulnerability model of anxiety 699

physical violence from others will tend to spontaneously perceive subsequent threats of possible
violence with a greater sense of looming vulnerability (described in Riskind, in press a). In a
similar way, past research documents that fear-stimulus movement often plays a role in the ac-
quisition of fears by animal phobics (McNally & Steketee, 1985).
A person's subjective interpretations (whether correct or not) of past direct experiences with
threat (such as when they were threatened by others) could influence fears. It would also seem
reasonable to expect that a fearful sense of looming vulnerability could be influenced by fantasy
or imagination, and inappropriate generalizations from past experiences with threats.* Be this
as it may, the storage of patterns of action by threat objects in episodic or scriptural memory
has major effects. As stated by Abelson (1981) about the social-cognitive development of clini-
cally relevant scripts:
The essential insight of the clinical psychologist is that the stuff of neurosis is the repeated construction
of present situations in terms of a preemptive metaphor, that is, an inappropriate similarity to a kernel
situation from the past. (p. 724)

CONCLUSIONS
The main proposition of the present article is that a sense of looming vulnerability is part of
the central (if previously overlooked) meaning of threat or danger that elicits anxiety, sensitizes
the individual to signs of threat, and makes the anxiety more easy to condition and less likely to
habituate. The looming vulnerability model integrates a diverse collection of studies and brings
the conceptualization of anxiety closer to ethological and developmental observations of fear.
The looming vulnerability paradigm advanced here captures a different but formerly ignored
piece of the phenomena of anxiety. The model focuses on the functional importance of move-
ment of the threat object as a body in motion in its headlong rush to produce a dreaded out-
come. Although it rests on the foundation provided by Beck and Emery (1985) and other
cognitive models, the looming vulnerability model has new implications for understanding and
generating predictions about a variety of phenomena related to anxiety and fear. It also specifies
cognitive-appraisal content and a judgment-bias that is distinct to anxiety and discriminates it
from depression. In addition, the model specifies the element of appraisal that may be most clo-
sely and distinctively related to threat-related cognitions in anxiety and fear.
Implications for clinical intervention
I f the anticipated growth-rate of the threat object as a body in motion is critical to anxiety,
then it would tend to follow that reducing this sense of motion and looming vulnerability would
reduce anxiety. Recently, a mental imagery manipulation was used in an experiment to see if it
would reduce subclinical obsessional fears of contamination (Riskind et al., in press b).
Participants were shown a series of video presentations of sites such as dirty public toilets. We
sought to reduce the rate at which threat could advance by means of instructions to participants
to imagine that contamination was 'frozen' in place and unable to move. Measures in the study
included self-reports of anxiety and worry, and indirect assessments of fear and avoidance beha-
vior. Results, particularly of the measures less subject to obvious demand effects, indicated that
freeze imagery reduced fear and avoidance for the obsessional participants. Comparable
methods are being developed to use as interventions for other forms of anxiety including gener-
alized anxiety (Riskind, in press a; Riskind, in press b).
Temporal distortions that slow down time as benign reappraisals?
As we have seen, studies investigating the looming vulnerability model have found consider-
able support for m a n y of its propositions. While such studies uphold a link between a sense of
looming vulnerability and anxiety, there seem to be some exceptions in real life. For example,
there are rare instances in which a person who is faced with a life-threatening event (such as a

*Thomas Borkovec has suggested, in a personal communication, that a looming maladaptive style may develop from ex-
periences in which an infant or child is scared by sudden events. Because of early experiences with sudden events, a
child may develop the style as a way of attempting to anticipate threatening events to reduce their aversiveness.
700 John H. Riskind

t r u c k t h a t is b e a r i n g o n t h e m ) r e p o r t a n e x p e r i e n c e o f t i m e s l o w i n g d o w n . I n d e e d , this r e a s o n i n g
recalls a l i t t l e - n o t e d c a s e s t u d y o f a u r i n e p h o b i c (in F o a & K o z a k , 1986) w h o r e p o r t e d l y l o w -
e r e d his fears o v e r d r o p s o f u r i n e t h a t w e r e p l a c e d o n his a r m by i m a g i n i n g t h a t he w a s a b l e to
' f r e e z e ' t h e s p o t s c o n t a m i n a t e d by u r i n e to p r e v e n t t h e i r s p r e a d . It seems likely, in the c o n t e x t
o f t h e l o o m i n g v u l n e r a b i l i t y m o d e l , t h a t the p a t i e n t was a b l e to use b e n i g n r e a p p r a i s a l ( L a z a r u s
& F o l k m a n , 1984) to r e d u c e t h r e a t b y u s i n g i m a g e r y to s t o p the ' h a r m - l o o m i n g ' o r c o n t i n u i n g
g r o w t h - r a t e o f t h r e a t (the s p r e a d o f c o n t a m i n a t i o n ) as it c a m e c l o s e r to p r o d u c i n g h a r m .
I n c l o s i n g , the l o o m i n g v u l n e r a b i l i t y m o d e l h e l p s to s u b s u m e a n d to i n t e g r a t e in a single, uni-
fied f r a m e w o r k a d i v e r s e c o l l e c t i o n o f o b s e r v a t i o n s f r o m the p s y c h o l o g i c a l , e t h o l o g i c a l , p h y s i o -
logical, a n d d e v e l o p m e n t a l l i t e r a t u r e s . T h e n e w f o r m u l a t i o n has i m p l i c a t i o n s f o r c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s
o f effective w a r n i n g s , p e r s u a s i o n a n d f e a r - a p p e a l s , h e a l t h p s y c h o l o g y , a n d a c c o u n t s f o r f a m i l i a r
p a s t f i n d i n g s o n a n x i e t y a n d f e a r as well as a h o s t o f n e w p r e d i c t e d r e l a t i o n s h i p s .

Acknowledgements--Thanks are extended to Ted Gessner for helpful comments on this manuscript.

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