Interpretation Bias Featured in Military Personnel with High Trait Anxiety Measured by a Novel Paradigm

Background: Anxiety has become one of the most common psychological problems affecting the combat effectiveness of soldiers. As the generation, maintenance, and recurrence of anxiety have an important interaction with interpretation bias, yet none proof was for the existence of interpretation bias in military personnel.Methods: 112 military officers and soldiers were recruited. Based on scores of the Trait-anxiety Inventory, participants were divided into the high trait anxiety group and the low trait anxiety group. the Picture Sentence Association Paradigm comprised of military-simulated ambiguous scenarios and emotional facial expressions was used to test the differences of the interpretation bias between the two groups.Results: Military personnel with high trait anxiety showed interpretation bias by endorsing more negative valence to the ambiguous scenarios and reject the positive valence. Especially in a self-related scenario, the interpretation bias was more remarkable.Conclusion: This study revealed the existed interpretation bias in military personnel with high trait anxiety using a new paradigm and highlighted the need for further researches to improve the measurement of interpretation bias. Moreover, the picture sentence association paradigm could provide plausible methods for cognitive bias modification to decrease the soldiers’ anxiety.