Cognitive processes in social anxiety: the effects of self-focus, rumination and anticipatory processing.
We examined three cognitive processes hypothesized to contribute to biases in judgments about and memory for social events: self-focused attention, post-event rumination, and anticipatory processing. Socially anxious (N = 58) and nonanxious (N = 58) subjects participated in a social interaction and then completed measures of self-focused attention and anxiety-related physiological sensations and behavior. The next day, subjects completed measures that assessed frequency of post-event processing and recall of the interaction. The results indicated that selective attention to negative self-related information led to biases in social judgments and recollections and that post-event processing contributed to the recall of negative self-related information. No evidence was found for selective retrieval of negative self-related information prior to a second social interaction. The results reconcile inconsistent previous findings related to memory bias in social anxiety.
Mellings
T M
TM
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Alden
L E
LE
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D001007:Anxiety / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D011897:Random Allocation; D019455:Self Psychology; D012919:Social Behavior; D012938:Social Perception