Anxiety identity centrality is associated with avoidant coping in anxious adults

Introduction: Some have suggested that labeling oneself as having clinical anxiety may promote avoidant coping, which is associated with poor clinical outcomes. However, the construct of anxiety identity centrality (seeing one's anxiety as relatively important to one's self-concept) has rarely been assessed, and its relationship with avoidant coping has not been investigated. Methods: In a sample of 1,234 high-anxiety adults, we analyzed the relationship between anxiety identity centrality and situational and experiential avoidance (preregistration: https://osf.io/g8qh9/ ). A Bayesian ordered probit regression framework was used to model the relationships between ordinal variables. Results: As hypothesized, anxiety identity centrality showed small-to-medium positive correlations with situational (r = .42, p < .001) and experiential (r = .12, p < .001) avoidance. After controlling for anxiety symptom severity, anxiety identity centrality was still positively associated with situational (b = 0.34, 95% credible interval [0.22, 0.48]) and experiential (b = 0.13, 95% CI [0.03, 0.28]) avoidance. Discussion: Anxiety identity centrality is a correlate of avoidant coping that can be measured with a single-item ordinal measure. This study is cross-sectional; we cannot infer causal or temporal relationships between anxiety identity centrality and avoidant coping. Future research should investigate their causal relationship.