The relationship to general fearfulness, which indicates a person reporting several
strong fears, has also been investigated. Such results have revealed that dental
anxiety is related to general fearfulness in children 64-66, and high levels of general
fearfulness in young adults 26 and in adults 67. General fearfulness is the overall
measure of fear propensity, obtained by calculating the reaction to a number of
phenomena and situations 68
It has been shown that cognitive vulnerability-related perceptions in adolescents are
positively correlated with their levels of dental anxiety. Vulnerability perceptions
have also been shown to mediate the relationship between negative dental