You never get a chance to undo a negative first impression: Social anxiety is associated with impaired positive updating of social information
Publication year
2023Number of pages
9 p.
Source
Personality and Individual Differences, 203, (2023), article 111993ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor
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Organization
SW OZ BSI KLP
Journal title
Personality and Individual Differences
Volume
vol. 203
Languages used
English (eng)
Subject
Experimental Psychopathology and TreatmentAbstract
In an ever-changing social world, learning and updating beliefs about others are essential for smooth interpersonal functioning. Social anxiety is a common and burdensome condition involving difficulties in interpersonal functioning. However, the processes governing the learning and updating of beliefs regarding others, processes crucial for these interactions, are poorly understood. In order to address this gap, we used a novel modification of a reversal-learning task. The task consisted of two phases. In the first (learning) phase, participants learned that interactions with certain individuals were associated with negative outcomes and other individuals with positive outcomes. In the second (updating) phase, these associations were reversed. Hence, negative individuals became positive and vice-versa, and participants had to update their initial beliefs. Study 1 (n = 87; undergraduate students) revealed that social anxiety was not associated with biases in learning positive or negative information about others. However, social anxiety was associated with a deficit in positively updating existing negative beliefs. Study 2 (n = 248; Mturk workers) replicated these findings in a representative and demographically diverse sample, controlling for depression severity and age. The current research suggests that social anxiety-related difficulty in the positive updating of negative social information may contribute to the impairment in interpersonal functioning.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [243984]
- Electronic publications [130742]
- Faculty of Social Sciences [30023]
- Open Access publications [105016]
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