Social inference and social anxiety: evidence of a fear-congruent self-referential learning bias.
OBJECTIVE
Fears of negative evaluation characterise social anxiety, and preferential processing of fear-relevant information is implicated in maintaining symptoms. Little is known, however, about the relationship between social anxiety and the process of inferring negative evaluation. The ability to use social information to learn what others think about one, referred to here as self-referential learning, is fundamental for effective social interaction. The aim of this research was to examine whether social anxiety is associated with self-referential learning.


METHODS
102 Females with either high (n = 52) or low (n = 50) self-reported social anxiety completed a novel probabilistic social learning task. Using trial and error, the task required participants to learn two self-referential rules, 'I am liked' and 'I am disliked'.


RESULTS
Participants across the sample were better at learning the positive rule 'I am liked' than the negative rule 'I am disliked', β = -6.4, 95% CI [-8.0, -4.7], p < 0.001. This preference for learning positive self-referential information was strongest in the lowest socially anxious and was abolished in the most symptomatic participants. Relative to the low group, the high anxiety group were better at learning they were disliked and worse at learning they were liked, social anxiety by rule interaction β = 3.6; 95% CI [+0.3, +7.0], p = 0.03.


CONCLUSIONS
The specificity of the results to self-referential processing requires further research.


CONCLUSIONS
Healthy individuals show a robust preference for learning that they are liked relative to disliked. This positive self-referential bias is reduced in social anxiety in a way that would be expected to exacerbate anxiety symptoms.
School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Oakfield House, Bristol BS8 2BN, UK. kate.button@bristol.ac.uk
Katherine S
KS
Button
Michael
M
Browning
Marcus R
MR
Munafò
Glyn
G
Lewis
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008875:Middle Aged; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D011337:Probability Learning; D012649:Self Concept; D012938:Social Perception