Objective: This study aimed to examine the relationship between adolescents’ anxiety sensitivity and worry, and to evaluate the parallel mediating effects of multidimensional experiential avoidance’ sub-factors.
Methods: We measured the anxiety sensitivity, multidimensional experiential avoidance, and worry of 287 high school students (11th and 12th grades; 132 males and 155 females) living in Seoul and the Seoul metropolitan area using a self-reported scale. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, parallel mediating effect analysis and bootstrapping analysis were conducted using SPSS Statistics 23 and SPSS PROCESS 3.0 on the collected data.
Results: The parallel mediating effects of multidimensional experiential avoidance were examined in the relationship between anxiety sensitivity and worry. The results showed that only distress aversion among the sub-factors of multidimensional experiential avoidance was significant. The results confirmed that the attitude of not accepting pain increased pathological worry in the mechanism of anxiety sensitivity, an organic weakness, that increases the worry of adolescents.
Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that it is necessary to consider the levels of anxiety sensitivity, experiential avoidance, and, especially, distress aversion, when planning a psychological intervention for adolescents’ worries.