t, when in the presence of the conditioning stimulus, a being will display behavior that may be interpreted as evidence of the presence of anxiety. Such behavior may include urination, defecation, attempting to flee, and other actions.
Criteria, Antecedents, and Consequences
There are four general criteria that establish the existence of anxiety (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, pp. 393-444). These criteria are as follows:
1. A subject must experience feelings of apprehension or anxiousness to establish the presence of anxiety.
2. To establish the presence of anxiety, a subject must not be able to attribute the feelings of apprehension or anxiousness to any specific causal factor.
3. A subject must exhibit subjective behavioral responses to the feelings of apprehension or anxiousness in order to establish the presence of anxiety.
4. A subject must exhibit objective behavioral, physiologic, and cognitive responses to the feelings of apprehension or anxiousness in order to establish the presence of anxiety.
There are three antecedents of anxiety. The antecedents of anxiety are as follows:
1. A subject must be capable of feeling emotion (Catanzaro. 1993, pp. 327-330). Apprehension and anxiousness cannot be experienced by a subject, if the subject is incapable of feeling emotion. The experience of the feeling of apprehension and anxiety is one of the criteria for establishing the presence of anxiety.
2. A subject must be capable of reacting subjectively to a feeling of emotion (Weisz, Sweeney, Proffitt, & Carr, 1993, pp. 411-418). If a subject cannot react on a subjective level to a feeling of emotion, the subject is incapable of fulfilling one of the criteriaùa subjective behavioral responseùfor establishing the presence of anxiety.
3. A subject must be capable of reacting objectively to a feeling of emotion (Eysenck, Mogg, May, Richards, & Mathews, 1991, pp. 144-150). If a subject cannot...