Perceiving the World in a Fundamentally Different Way

EurekAlert! People with anxiety show fundamental differences in perception

Those with chronic anxiety have a hard time distinguishing between safe and threatening stimuli: what they perceive and how they evaluate and classify it. This could be an encounter with another person in a crowd; it could be a piece of information that has been received; it could be a news article. 

“. . . when it comes to emotional experiences, [anxious persons] show a behavioral phenomenon known as over-generalization, the researchers say.  . . . .

‘Anxiety traits can be completely normal.  . . . Yet an emotional event, even minor sometimes, can induce brain changes that might lead to full-blown anxiety,” says  Rony Paz of Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel.

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