Evidence for avoidance tendencies linked to anxiety about specific types of thinking.

ABSTRACT: Anxieties that are specific to a particular kind of thinking have been demonstrated for a variety of cognitive domains. One hypothesized consequence of these anxieties is reduced interest in pursuing activities and, consequentially, careers that involve the type of thinking in question in an effort to avoid engaging in that type of thinking. There is little research addressing this avoidance hypothesis, possibly because it is difficult to categorize pursuits as objectively "creative" or "spatial". Here, we measured the perceptions that participants, themselves, hold about how much pursuits (careers and activities) involve different types of thinking. We developed a novel framework for calculating "affinity coefficients", within-person associations between perceived cognitive involvement an

SUBMITTER: Daker RJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9968294 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature