title: Impression formation and revision in social anxiety disorder.
abstract: Interpersonal relations are markedly impaired in social anxiety. Yet, little is known about the ways social anxiety affects social cognition. We examined impression formation and impression revision among individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD, n = 26) and non-anxious individuals (n = 29). Participants read initial descriptions of protagonists depicted as dominant, neutral or submissive and rated them on social rank and affiliation dimensions. Next, participants were presented with behavioral acts that were either congruent, incongruent or irrelevant to the initial descriptions, and re-rated the protagonists. Individuals with SAD (a) rated others as more extreme on social rank dimension, (b) rated others as lower on the affiliation dimension, and (c) revised their impressions of others to a greater extent than did the non-anxious individuals. Understanding the ways social anxiety affects the formation and revision of perceptions of others can improve our understanding of maintaining processes in SAD.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department and the Gonda Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
authors.forename: Ayala
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Haker
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department and the Gonda Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel; Psychology Department, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Idan M
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Aderka
authors.affiliation: Anxiety Disorders and Behavior Therapy Unit, Outpatient Department, Geha Mental Health Center, Petach-Tikva, Israel.
authors.forename: Sofi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Marom
authors.affiliation: Anxiety Disorders and Behavior Therapy Unit, Outpatient Department, Geha Mental Health Center, Petach-Tikva, Israel; Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel.
authors.forename: Haggai
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hermesh
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department and the Gonda Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel. Electronic address: evagilboa@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Gilboa-Schechtman
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Affiliation; Cognitive biases; Impression formation; Social anxiety disorder; Social rank