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Examining the Relationships Among Social Anxiety, Fears of Evaluation, and Interpretation Bias

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Abstract

Previous research suggests that individuals with high levels of social anxiety (SA) tend to make negative interpretations of ambiguous social situations but fail to make positive interpretations of such situations. These biases have been shown to occur at both faster (more immediate) and slower (more reflective) levels of processing. Fears of evaluation may play a role in the tendency of individuals with SA to exhibit interpretation biases. As an extension of previous research, we examined the unique variance accounted for by fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and fear of positive evaluation (FPE) in the relationship between SA and interpretation biases, using a paradigm that collected both reaction time and self-report data. FPE accounted for significant variance in the relationship between SA and negative interpretation bias at a faster level of processing (reaction time measure). However, neither FNE nor FPE accounted for significant variance in the relationship between SA and negative interpretation bias at a slower level of processing (self-report measure). Our findings suggest that FPE may play an important role in biased interpretations during more immediate processing, whereas SA may be broadly influential for biased interpretations during more reflective processing.

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Notes

  1. Additional issues related to the reaction time and endorsement rate measures of interpretation biases through the WSAP are addressed in the “Discussion” Section.

  2. A full list of the word-sentence pairs used in the modified WSAP is available upon request.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Justin W. Weeks, who commented on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

Conflict of interest

M. Taylor Dryman and Richard G. Heimberg declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (national and institutional). Informed consent was obtained from all individual subjects participating in the study.

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  1. Adult Anxiety Clinic, Department of Psychology, Temple University, 1701 North 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19122-6085, USA

    M. Taylor Dryman & Richard G. Heimberg

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  1. M. Taylor Dryman
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  2. Richard G. Heimberg
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Correspondence to Richard G. Heimberg.

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Dryman, M.T., Heimberg, R.G. Examining the Relationships Among Social Anxiety, Fears of Evaluation, and Interpretation Bias. Cogn Ther Res 39, 646–657 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-015-9694-4

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