Transdiagnostic psychiatric symptom dimensions predict behavioural cautiousness

Approach-avoidance conflict (AAC), a laboratory representation of risky foraging, serves as mainstay of pre-clinical anxiety disorder research across species. This is largely motivated by the impact of anxiolytic drugs on cautious behaviour within these tests. While such cautiousness appears to be a stable behavioural trait in humans, growing evidence suggests that it is insufficiently explained by the type of trait anxiety self-reported in standard questionnaires. Here, we ask what other clinically relevant personality traits might explain behavioural cautiousness, using an exploration-confirmation approach across two large online samples (N1 = 315; N2 = 690). Participants chose whether, and how rapidly, to approach a reward under risk of a virtual predator with varying threat probability and magnitude. They also completed a comprehensive psychiatric questionnaire battery with a known three-factor structure, consisting of Compulsive Behaviour and Intrusive Thought (CIT), Anxious-Depression (AD), and Social-Withdrawal (SW). We found that transdiagnostic compulsivity (i.e. CIT) was the best predictor of all behavioural readouts. Higher transdiagnostic compulsivity predicted decreased passive avoidance, increased behavioural inhibition, and reduced sensitivity to threat features. We also found that high transdiagnostic compulsivity implied an altered subjective model of threat and reward relations in the environment. Analysing individual questionnaire scores revealed broad and unspecific personality-behaviour relationships, underscoring the value of transdiagnostic dimensions over traditional phenotyping. Crucially, no associations were found between behaviour and transdiagnostic anxiety-depression (i.e. AD) or gender. In conclusion, this study highlights that cautiousness in AAC tasks is comprised of two components, which are linked to transdiagnostic compulsivity in opposite ways, but not specifically or particularly strongly to self-reported trait anxiety. This finding challenges a traditional understanding of AAC tasks and opens up a new view on cautious behaviour in every-day situations.