Better Safe Than Sorry

A Common Signature of General Vulnerability for Psychopathology

Bibliographic Data

ID21786331
AuthorsOmer Van Den Bergh (0000-0001-6394-7363, KU Leuven, corresponding author), Jos F Brosschot (0000-0003-1472-810X, Leiden University), Jos Brosschot (Leiden University), Hugo Critchley (0000-0002-2445-9284, Brighton and Sussex Medical School), Julian F Thayer (0000-0001-9385-3421, University of California, Irvine), Cristina Ottaviani (0000-0002-5240-4387, Fondazione Santa Lucia)
Year2021
Volume16
Issue2
Pages225-246
Publication date2021-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePerspectives on Psychological Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1745-6916 • E-ISSN: 1745-6924
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1745691620950690
PMID33006909
OpenAlexW3091302344
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited167

Several labels, such as neuroticism, negative emotionality, and dispositional negativity, indicate a broad dimension of psychopathology. However, largely separate, often disorder-specific research lines have developed that focus on different cognitive and affective characteristics that are associated with this dimension, such as perseverative cognition (worry, rumination), reduced autobiographical memory specificity, compromised fear learning, and enhanced somatic-symptom reporting. In this article, we present a theoretical perspective within a predictive-processing framework in which we trace these phenotypically different characteristics back to a common underlying “better-safe-than-sorry” processing strategy. This implies information processing that tends to be low in sensory-perceptual detail, which allows threat-related categorical priors to dominate conscious experience and for chronic uncertainty/surprise because of a stagnated error-reduction process. This common information-processing strategy has beneficial effects in the short term but important costs in the long term. From this perspective, we suggest that the phenomenally distinct cognitive and affective psychopathological characteristics mentioned above represent the same basic processing heuristic of the brain and are only different in relation to the particular type of information involved (e.g., in working memory, in autobiographical memory, in the external and internal world). Clinical implications of this view are discussed

Anxiety · Cognition · Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Information processing · Psychopathology · Rumination · Worry · Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes · Clinical Psychology · Mental Health Research Topics · Psychology · Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments

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