In the present research it was argued that a situation is evaluated as threatening or non-threatening by an individual on the basis of the type of expected consequence. The purpose of Study 1 was to make a screening of the threatening consequences which people expect to occur in anxiety-provoking situations, and to develop a system for categorizing these consequences. The results indicate that the reasons given by individuals for their experienced anxiety in various kinds of daily life situations could be subsumed under a limited number of consequence classes. Physically threatening effects (such as physical pain, physical injury, and irrational or unrealistically apprehended consequences), personal consequences (like experiences of personal inadequacy, loss of control of one’s impulses, threats to one’s own existence and feelings of guilt), and interpersonal consequences (punishment, shame [exposure and embarrassment], rejection, and separation) cover the main aversive consequences which adolescents expect from threatening everyday life situations. These consequence categories were extracted both by subjecting free descriptions to content analysis in Study 1 and by determining consequence dimensions with factor analysis of quantitative consequence statements in Study 2.