War-related safety preparatory behavior

The aim of the present study was to understand the role of transdiagnostic vulnerabilities, namely IU and neuroticism, in initiating safety-seeking preparatory behaviours under the threat of an imminent war. How do these dispositional traits predict the engagement in safety-seeking across core symptoms of anxiety and fear of war, a few weeks after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war? Due to the lack of suitable measures in the literature to cover the phenomenon, first a short inventory for measuring these safety actions, the War-Related Preparatory Safety-Seeking Inventory (W-PRESS) was elaborated and validated via Item Response Theory (IRT). Next, a transdiagnostic cognitive behavioural framework was proposed for the determinants of W-PRESS: intolerance of Uncertainty (IUS-12), fear of war (FOWARS), neuroticism (Big-Five) and anxiety (DASS). The Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) results confirmed the proposed model.