Popis: |
Avoidance is typically adaptive given it prevents threat. However, avoidance becomes pathological when it is executed out of proportion of threat (i.e., excessive or insufficient avoidance), persists in the absence of threat, or excessively generalize to other innocuous situations. Although there has been an increase in research in these different processes of pathological avoidance, the role of inter-individual differences in these avoidance processes receives less research attention, despite of its theoretical and clinical importance. In this systematic review, we summarized the role of inter-individual traits that related to risk or resilient factors for anxiety-related disorders, trauma-and stressor-related disorders, obsessive-compulsive related disorders, pain related disorders, eating-related disorders, and affective disorders. A majority of the inter-individual differences had an apparent mixed or null effect on the different processes of avoidance. We discussed this lack of evidence of inter-individual differences on avoidance due to a lack of methodological and/or analytical consensus in the field, in addition to a lack of integration of recent findings into existing theories. Recommendations for future research are discussed, with a focus on examining the conditions or experimental parameters for certain inter-individual traits to manifest their effects on avoidance, identifying the nuances of inter-individual differences in avoidance, and a call for integrating recent preliminary findings into existing theories. |