Abstract
In accordance with research on autonomic functions, it was argued that the organization of behavioral reactions expressed by an individual in one threatening situation tends to be reproduced across different kinds of anxiety-provoking situations and over time. A self-report instrument was employed on which subjects rated their different psychic and somatic anxiety reactions for each of a set of anxiety-evoking situations. The inventory was administered twice over an interval of 6 mo. The results provided support for the hypothesis of stable idiosyncratic organizations of reactions over different kinds of threatening situations and of stable reaction patterns over time. Finally, it was argued that the strength of the expressed reaction patterns was related to perceptual characteristics of the situations. The empirical results supported the hypothesis.
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