The Influence of Fear of Negative Evaluation on Social Feedback Learning in Adults

Social feedback learning can be seen as the way we learn based on either acceptance or rejection of others. The purpose of this paper is to look into how different personality characteristics such as fear of negative evaluation and self-esteem influence this social feedback learning. The reason for this is that previous research has found differing findings. Whilst some suggest that fear of negative evaluation increases both reaction time in social evaluative tasks as well as prediction accuracy from negative feedback, others suggest that this occurs automatically (due to negativity bias), and thus is not influenced by the degree of fear of negative evaluation. To investigate this, 175 adult participants (30 (17.14%) = male; 145 (82.86%) = female) were asked to fill out the BFNES questionnaire to measure fear of negative evaluation as well as the RSES questionnaire to measure self-esteem. They were subsequently asked to do the Social Judgement Paradigm, in which they would predict...Show moreSocial feedback learning can be seen as the way we learn based on either acceptance or rejection of others. The purpose of this paper is to look into how different personality characteristics such as fear of negative evaluation and self-esteem influence this social feedback learning. The reason for this is that previous research has found differing findings. Whilst some suggest that fear of negative evaluation increases both reaction time in social evaluative tasks as well as prediction accuracy from negative feedback, others suggest that this occurs automatically (due to negativity bias), and thus is not influenced by the degree of fear of negative evaluation. To investigate this, 175 adult participants (30 (17.14%) = male; 145 (82.86%) = female) were asked to fill out the BFNES questionnaire to measure fear of negative evaluation as well as the RSES questionnaire to measure self-esteem. They were subsequently asked to do the Social Judgement Paradigm, in which they would predict either positive or negative feedback from a peer. After this, they were given the actual feedback. Following this, they were asked to evaluate the peer again. If their prediction was correct, social feedback learning had occurred. Additionally, their reaction time was measured. Results showed a significant moderate negative relationship between fear of negative evaluation and self-esteem. However, the degree of fear of negative evaluation did not influence reaction time in the social judgement paradigm, nor the prediction accuracy from negative feedback. However, both people with low fear of negative evaluation and high fear of negative evaluation did exhibit social feedback learning in the prediction task. This paper provides greater insight into the influence of fear of negative evaluation on social feedback learning.Show less

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The Influence of Fear of Negative Evaluation on Social Feedback Learning in Adults