title: Social phobia and interpretation of social events.
abstract: It has been suggested that social phobia may be characterized by two interpretation biases. First, a tendency to interpret ambiguous social events in a negative fashion. Second, a tendency to interpret unambiguous but mildly negative social events in a catastrophic fashion. To assess this possibility, patients with generalized social phobia, equally anxious patients with another anxiety disorder, and non-patient controls were presented with ambiguous scenarios depicting social and non-social events, and with unambiguous scenarios depicting mildly negative social events. Interpretations were assessed by participants' answers to open-ended questions and by their rankings and belief ratings for experimenter-provided, alternative explanations. Compared to both control groups, patients with generalized social phobia were more likely to interpret ambiguous social events in a negative fashion and to catastrophize in response to unambiguous, mildly negative social events.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Southampton, Highfield, UK.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Stopa
authors.forename: D M
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Clark
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology; D001290:Attitude; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires