The network structure of anxiety: an analysis of 150 triggers across different life domains

Anxiety is a trait that requires understanding of its structure across fundamental life domains. The unresolved question is whether anxiety functions as a unified construct or a collection of specific concerns. While correlation-based approaches often posit a general latent anxiety factor, they may lack the nature of worries across different life areas. The current study assessed anxiety across ten life domains: health, family, work, finance, social, death, culture, education, environment, and technology. Participants (N=341) reported on the frequency and intensity of their worries for 150 triggers. We used Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) to test for a general factor and EBICglasso Network Analysis to explore the network structure of anxiety. EFA revealed a significant general factor, explaining = 48% (for both frequency and intensity) of the variance, supporting anxiety as a unitary predisposition. Network analysis revealed a highly modular structure at the item level (modularity = 0.75), with 18-19 distinct communities of concerns, indicating evidence for domain-specificity. At the same time, domains were densely interconnected. Our findings reveal a dual-nature architecture of anxiety as a general predisposition with the modular system of domain-specific concerns.