People who score high on social anxiety measures tend to interpret social cues negatively and evaluate negative interpretations of social scenarios as more likely. The aim of this research is to...Show morePeople who score high on social anxiety measures tend to interpret social cues negatively and evaluate negative interpretations of social scenarios as more likely. The aim of this research is to fill the gap in the literature about potential interference of cognitive biases in social anxiety with a probabilistic learning paradigm in a social evaluative environment. The current study sampled participants along the social anxiety spectrum and used the SELF-Profile paradigm to make participants believe that they were evaluated on characteristics about themselves that they endorsed at an earlier point. Data of 19 healthy female undergraduates across the social anxiety spectrum was used (Mage (in years) = 19.90, SE = 1.57). Before every trial of the experiment participants needed to indicate their expectation of being accepted by one of four participant-chosen peers based on a personal statement. Participants received immediate acceptance or rejection feedback from the peer which, unknowing to the participant, had a predetermined probability of giving acceptance feedback on 15%, 30%, 70% or 85% of the trials. Scoring lower on the self-report social anxiety measure (LSAS) was significantly associated with more positive predictions for the positive peer but not significantly correlated with negative predictions for the negative peer. Neither reaction times with the respective peers (positive or negative) nor the overall pre-task expectation of receiving acceptance feedback were significantly associated with the self-reported social anxiety score in our sample. Furthermore, we could not identify a significant effect of self-reported social anxiety scores on the amount of recalled acceptance feedback from the negative and positive peer, respectively. Future studies should investigate gender-effects and include psychophysiological measurements to circumvent social desirability and other self-report biases.Show less
