Behavioral inhibition and posttrauma symptomatology: Moderating effects of safety behaviors and biological sex.

OBJECTIVES

Behavioral inhibition is a trait-level factor associated with posttraumatic stress. Safety behaviors may impact this link by interfering with anxiety habituation. The current study examined the unique and interactive effects of behavioral inhibition, safety behaviors, and participant sex on posttrauma symptom clusters.

METHOD: Participants (N = 131; 75.6% female; M = 19.9 years) completed a trauma history interview and questionnaires assessing behavioral inhibition, safety behavior, and posttrauma symptom severity.

RESULTS

Safety behaviors were associated with intrusion (partial correlations [pr] = 0.319), avoidance (pr = 0.274), cognition-mood (pr = 0.274), and arousal-reactivity (pr = 0.538) symptoms (all p ≤ 0.001). An interaction of sex and safety behaviors was noted for avoidance (p = 0.047, pr = -0.159) with a significant relation observed only among women ( p < 0.001, pr = 0.442). Safety behaviors also moderated the link between behavioral inhibition and arousal-reactivity (p = 0.002, pr = 0.272) with inhibition predicting symptoms at high levels of safety behavior (p = 0.024, pr = 0.171).

CONCLUSION

Trauma-related safety behaviors are associated with greater posttrauma symptoms and evidence differential effects across individual symptom domains.