The present study experimentally investigated the role of rejection sensitivity during adolescence and young adulthood on the ability of predicting the chance of receiving positive peer feedback....Show moreThe present study experimentally investigated the role of rejection sensitivity during adolescence and young adulthood on the ability of predicting the chance of receiving positive peer feedback. Previous studies examined trait characteristics, neural correlates and social learning of socially anxious individuals and found that rejection sensitivity has a negative impact on how one predicts and implements positive feedback. Participants (132 adults and 61 adolescents) took part in a social learning paradigm, wherein they had to predict whether four of their peers would like or dislike them based on certain personality characteristics. To see if learning biases are present, the scores of the participants were operationalized by calculating the Positive Prediction Discrepancy (PPD), the difference between the expected ratio of positive feedback and the actual probability of it. Unknown to the participants, the four peers differed in the probability of giving positive feedback. Results indicated that neither rejection sensitivity (RS) nor age significantly predicted PPD scores for peer 1, peer 3, and peer 4. However, RS exhibited a significant negative effect on PPD scores for peer 2, suggesting that higher RS was associated with lower predictions of positive feedback for this peer. Altogether, this study suggests that while rejection sensitivity did show a significant negative relationship with positive prediction discrepancy for peer 2, there was no significant impact observed for the other peers or with age across the different peer feedback anticipation discrepancies. This indicates a nuanced association between rejection sensitivity and the anticipation of positive feedback, particularly in specific peer contexts, rather than a generalized effect across all peers.Show less
There is an increasing demand from health professionals to develop recommendations about evidence-based and ethical use of placebo effects in the clinical practice, but the underlying mechanisms...Show moreThere is an increasing demand from health professionals to develop recommendations about evidence-based and ethical use of placebo effects in the clinical practice, but the underlying mechanisms behind the placebo effect are not all known yet. One of these mechanisms is observational learning, which is the topic of this study. The current research has two research aims. First, the influence of observational learning on the placebo effect is investigated. Second, the mediating effect of pain expectations in the role of observational learning on the placebo effect is studied. Based on previous findings it was expected that observational learning would induce placebo responses and that pain expectations would mediate this effect. Twenty-three healthy students from 18 to 30 years old participated in this study, which was a single-blinded randomized controlled trial. Placebo analgesia was measured as the difference in pain scores between the activation and the deactivation of a sham device over the course of 18 trials. Pain scores were given on the Numeric Rating Scale (NRS), with scores between 0 and 10. Placebo analgesia was compared in two groups: an observational learning group and a control group. Both groups received painful stimuli in combination with fake activation ore fake deactivation of a sham device. Participants in the observational learning group watched a video in which a model showed analgesic effects after every pain stimuli when the sham device was activated (ON) but not when the sham device was deactivated (OFF). The control group also got to see a video, but in this video there was no relation between the pain scores of the model and de activation/deactivation of the sham device. The results show that observational learning did not lead to placebo analgesia (F(4.392,92.228) = .557, p = .710). Furthermore, pain expectations did not mediate the relation between observational learning and the placebo effect (b = 0.01, 95% CI [-0.04, 0.10]). These findings contradict previous research that did find a placebo effect induced by observational learning and a mediating role of expectations. Future research should focus on the circumstances in which observational learning does induce a placebo effect. When observational learning does induce placebo responses, the mediating factor of pain expectation should be re-evaluated.Show less
Peer victimization can lead to depression, social anxiety, and suicide. Online peer victimization is an upcoming phenomenon. In this study, the relationship between the experience of online and...Show morePeer victimization can lead to depression, social anxiety, and suicide. Online peer victimization is an upcoming phenomenon. In this study, the relationship between the experience of online and offline peer victimization and learning from negative social feedback was investigated. It was expected that online and offline peer victimization would predict better negative social learning. This could be a possible pathway between peer victimization and depression and social anxiety. The Multidimensional Offline and Online Peer Victimization Scale (MOOPV) was used to measure the experience of online and offline peer victimization during the past six months. The Self profile task was used to measure negative social learning. Regression analyses were performed with 149 students aged between 18 and 29 (mean age = 20.41), but no significant effects were found. Therefore, it is possible that peer victimization is not a predictor of negative social learning. An alternative explanation for the fact that no effect was measured could be the few participants in this sample who have experienced offline or online peer victimization during the last six months before the study. Furthermore, the simplified way in which negative social learning was measured may have caused no effect was found. Exploratively, a weak negative correlation was found between whether someone had experienced offline peer victimization and how someone feels about themselves. In all cases, more research is needed on the path of online and offline peer victimization to depression and social anxiety to develop more effective treatment approaches.Show less
