ABSTRACT
People are anxious about many different things, and to many different degrees, but nearly everyone knows about anxiety from firsthand experience. We speak about ourselves and others using a vocabulary rich with words about feeling anxious, tense, nervous, afraid, worried, scared, and the like. We use such terms not only to describe feelings, but to explain behaviors, We say that someone did (or did not do) something because she was afraid or because he was nervous. Scientists too have held that fear and anxiety (terms this paper will treat as synonyms) cause many behaviors, normal and abnormal, adaptive and maladaptive. This anxiety theory of behavior is widely accepted by those who help people with psychological problems. But the meaning of anxiety, and its power to strongly influence behavior, are far from clear.
