Rejection Sensitivity as a Predictor of Social Feedback Processing from a Developmental Perspective

Receiving social feedback from others influences one’s self-view through social feedback processing. Healthy people tend to have a positivity bias toward social feedback, but many factors can influence social feedback processing leading to a negativity bias. Rejection sensitivity (RS) is characterized by a habit of anxiously expecting rejection with a heightened attunement. RS is often coupled with an intense reaction which is common in individuals with borderline personality symptoms. In this paper, the level of RS and developmental stage, adolescents versus adults, is predicted to influence positive and negative learning levels from feedback. 144 adults and 74 adolescents performed an impromptu speech whilst alleged judges were evaluating their performance. The participants completed self-evaluations, received feedback from the judges, and further evaluated how they felt about themselves and their performance. Affective updating, referring to the change in feelings about the self...Show moreReceiving social feedback from others influences one’s self-view through social feedback processing. Healthy people tend to have a positivity bias toward social feedback, but many factors can influence social feedback processing leading to a negativity bias. Rejection sensitivity (RS) is characterized by a habit of anxiously expecting rejection with a heightened attunement. RS is often coupled with an intense reaction which is common in individuals with borderline personality symptoms. In this paper, the level of RS and developmental stage, adolescents versus adults, is predicted to influence positive and negative learning levels from feedback. 144 adults and 74 adolescents performed an impromptu speech whilst alleged judges were evaluating their performance. The participants completed self-evaluations, received feedback from the judges, and further evaluated how they felt about themselves and their performance. Affective updating, referring to the change in feelings about the self in response to feedback, was modeled using an adapted learning model. The level of RS did not predict the level of positive or negative learning rates, contrary to most previous research findings. Generally high RS has been found to pose a vulnerability to hypervigilance toward negative feedback. In comparison to adolescents, adults showed higher negative learning rates, in contrast to the general theoretical understanding of adolescents being more sensitive to social feedback. The findings suggest that future research should include additional constructs like emotion regulation, depression, and self-esteem, to investigate their influence on learning from feedback in different developmental stages.Show less

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Rejection Sensitivity as a Predictor of Social Feedback Processing from a Developmental Perspective