Social performance feedback received from others influences self-feelings and self-evaluations. Recent work provides initial evidence that socially anxious individuals, characterized by a...Show moreSocial performance feedback received from others influences self-feelings and self-evaluations. Recent work provides initial evidence that socially anxious individuals, characterized by a consistent negative self-view, show a negative bias for learning selfrelated information. A social speech task paradigm and a computational model were used to assess the hypothesis of whether a negative social learning bias regarding self-evaluation and self-feelings is present in subclinical socially anxious people. 106 young adults gave a speech in front of 3 judges from whom they received either positive or negative performance feedback. The feedback from the judges was simultaneously presented with the participants' own self-rating on their performance. Immediately after viewing both feedbacks, participants rated how they felt about themselves on a VAS scale. Affective Updating and an adapted Rescorla-Wagner learning model were used to assess how people changed their self-feelings over time in response to received feedback valence. Additionally, the study investigated the association between perfectionism, social anxiety and negative social feedback. Given that perfectionism is strongly related to both social anxiety and social rejection, we tested whether individuals with elevated levels of social anxiety and perfectionism would adjust their selffeelings stronger towards negative social feedback. Results did not indicate a negative social learning bias on self-feelings after receiving negative social feedback in socially anxious individuals. Also, perfectionism was not found to be a moderator between social anxiety and negative social feedback. Overall, results were non-significant, however, our study lies the groundwork and highlights the importance of further studies in this field.Show less
Social rejection is conceptualized as a threat to survival, yet the physiological mechanisms at work during social rejection have not received much attention. Prior research has shown a link...Show moreSocial rejection is conceptualized as a threat to survival, yet the physiological mechanisms at work during social rejection have not received much attention. Prior research has shown a link between heart rate changes and social rejection and the possible correlation of self-esteem levels to heart rate changes. Here we examined the effect of positive and negative peer feedback on heart rate changes of participants. Fifty participants (mean age = 20.4) took part in the newly developed social evaluation through feedback (SELF)- paradigm where they predicted, then received social evaluative feedback from four peers who differed in their probability of giving social acceptance versus rejection feedback. We hypothesized that social rejection would result in a transient slowing of heart rate and that this effect would be more prominent with unexpected social rejection. We also expected to find a significant difference in heart rate changes towards each different peer. Moreover, we expected self-esteem to influence heart rate reactions to feedback. As predicted, results revealed a more pronounced deceleration of heart rate during unexpected rejection, though this effect was also found with unexpected social acceptance. Difference in heart rate in response to feedback from each different peers was found, namely a transient slowing of heart rate for negative feedback from Peer 1 and positive feedback from Peer 4. Moreover, levels of self-esteem did not explain a significant amount of variance in heart rate changes. Future research should focus on a larger and more diverse sample size in order to confirm the current findings. This study added to current literature by again confirming a brake in heart rate during unexpected social rejection and by finding new results in heart rate during unexpected social acceptance from a more negative peer.Show less
The experience of being socially accepted or rejected can elicit different changes in heart rate reactivity of both children and adults. In addition, personal characteristics like aggressive...Show moreThe experience of being socially accepted or rejected can elicit different changes in heart rate reactivity of both children and adults. In addition, personal characteristics like aggressive behavior may influence this reaction. This study examined whether heart rate reactivity of four-to-seven-year-old children differed during the processing of positive, negative and neutral social judgments, and whether aggression levels were related to heart rate reactivity during the processing of social judgments. Heart rate and behavioral data of 29 children was collected during an adjusted version of the Social Judgment Task. Results showed significant differences in the behavioral responses to negative and neutral judgments, compared to the responses to positive judgments. No significant differences were found in heart rate reactivity during the three conditions. These results indicate that children do distinguish between the three conditions, but their heart rate reactivity might not be influenced by the content of the feedback yet. Additionally aggression seems to be related to heart rate reactivity during the positive and negative condition. These findings suggest that heart rate reactivity in response to social judgments might develop throughout childhood, while aggression levels already influence heart rate reactivity in young children.Show less
