Understanding approach-avoidance conflict dysregulation in anxiety: Cognitive processes and neural mechanisms

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1042.2025.0477

Abstract

Abstract:

Effectively resolving approach-avoidance conflicts is crucial in everyday life. However, anxious individuals exhibit behavioral manifestations of dysregulated approach-avoidance conflict. This dysregulation is characterized by abandoning positive outcomes to avoid stimuli that are unrelated to actual threats or less threatening. Traditional motivational theories divide individuals’ coping with approach-avoidance conflict into information input and behavioral output processes. However, these are insufficient to fully explain the specific mechanisms underlying approach-avoidance conflict dysregulation. In this review, we propose a three-stage model comprising conflict perception, conflict processing, and feedback learning. This model emphasizes that approach-avoidance conflict dysregulation in anxious individuals may manifest as heightened threat perception, imbalanced motivation-expected value comparison, and abnormal feedback learning. Future research can further validate the relative independence of these three stages in the model, parameterize the model through hierarchical and modular methods, and explore the mechanisms underlying approach-avoidance conflict dysregulation in anxious individuals through a developmental perspective.

Key words: anxiety, approach-avoidance conflict, expected value, motivation, cognitive neural mechanism

CLC Number:

B845
R395

XIA Yi, ZHANG Jie, ZHANG Huoyin, LEI Yi, DOU Haoran. Understanding approach-avoidance conflict dysregulation in anxiety: Cognitive processes and neural mechanisms[J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2025, 33(3): 477-493.

Figures/Tables 2

References 183

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