Anxiety sensitivity and disgust sensitivity predict blood-injection-injury fears in individuals with dental anxiety

Abstract

Background: Anxiety sensitivity (AS) and disgust sensitivity (DS) are transdiagnostic vulnerability factors for anxiety. Both correlate with blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia symptoms in several studies; however, there is ambiguity about their relative contributions, and studies investigating this have relied on unselected samples. Furthermore, although DS reliably predicts BII in studies that do not account for AS, this may be limited to domain-specific DS rather than DS more broadly. Aims: The aims of this study were to examine AS and DS as separate and simultaneous predictors of BII fears in a sample with a wide range of BII symptoms, and with attention to the specificity of DS to BII-relevant domains. Method: Fifty-three participants who scored above a clinical threshold on a validated measure of dental anxiety, and who represented a wide range of BII severity, completed measures of AS, DS and BII symptoms. Results: AS and DS were moderately to strongly correlated with BII severity (r =.40 and.47, p =.004 and