This study investigates the relationship between rejection sensitivity and social feedback learning rate. Rejection sensitivity is an aspect of social anxiety disorder which is especially prevalent...Show moreThis study investigates the relationship between rejection sensitivity and social feedback learning rate. Rejection sensitivity is an aspect of social anxiety disorder which is especially prevalent in adolescents. SAD has a significant relationship with social feedback learning rate and this study aims to go a step further and research whether rejection sensitivity is a leading factor in this relationship. Participants fill in the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale as well as the Children’s Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire. Afterwards they will do a speech task which includes a public speaking section and is judged by confederate judges who will rate them on their performance. The participants rate themselves before and after the feedback from the judges. The difference between individual’s rating before and after the feedback will be measured and this will form the basis of our data for analysis. During the analysis a correlational relationship will be analyzed between rejection sensitivity, its sub measures and social feedback learning rate. The hypothesis of the study is that individuals with higher rejection sensitivity score will have higher negative social feedback learning rates. Results show no significant relationship between the variables.Show less
Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU) was found to be a transdiagnostic construct that connects multiple disorders, such as general anxiety disorder, social anxiety, worry, and state/trait anxiety....Show moreIntolerance of Uncertainty (IU) was found to be a transdiagnostic construct that connects multiple disorders, such as general anxiety disorder, social anxiety, worry, and state/trait anxiety. Factor analytic studies identified two significantly distinct components of IU, namely Prospective and Inhibitory IU. Although IU was generally associated with State/Trait Anxiety, it remains unclear how they are related on the subscale level. This study examined the relationship between Prospective/Inhibitory IU and State/Trait Anxiety. Secondly, previous studies found that high-IU individuals are slower in their performance compared to low-IU counterparts. This study investigated the influence of IU on performance in social feedback learning. It compares the reaction times of high- and low-IU individuals in estimating feedbacks from peers. A total of 175 Leiden University students participated in the experiment. Questionnaires, such as the IUS-12 and the STAI, were used for assessment. In the SELF-Profile paradigm, participants had to estimate whether or not four chosen peers liked them. IU was significantly correlated with Trait Anxiety (p < .01) but not State Anxiety. However, no significant difference was found between high- and low-IU individuals in estimating feedbacks from peers. This study argued that the transdiagnostic relations of IU should be made specific, since differential relations between them exist. Secondly, the nature of the task in the experiment could influence participants’ threshold of ambiguity perception. That is, when the task does not elicit enough ambiguity, even participants with high IU might not be triggered to perceive uncertainty.Show less
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
