title: Social Anxiety and Interpretation Bias: Effect of Positive Priming.
abstract: This study examined how positive-scale assessment of ambiguous social stimuli affects interpretation bias in social anxiety. Participants with high and low social anxiety (N = 60) performed a facial expression discrimination task to assess interpretation bias. Participants were then randomly assigned to assess the emotion of briefly presented faces either on a negative or on a positive scale. They subsequently repeated the facial expression discrimination task. Participants with high versus low social anxiety made more negative interpretations of ambiguous facial expressions. However, those in the positive-scale assessment condition subsequently showed reduced negative interpretations of ambiguous facial expressions. These results suggest that interpretation bias in social anxiety could be mediated by positive priming rather than an outright negative bias.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Applied Psychology, Tianjin University, China; Department of Psychology and Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, China.
authors.forename: Xiaoling
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Peking University, China qmy@pku.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Mingyi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Qian
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Peking University, China.
authors.forename: Hongyu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Peking University, China.
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Mental Health Development Center, Tsinghua University, China.
authors.forename: Songwei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Guangdong Experimental High School, Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Peking University, China.
authors.forename: Muyu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Peking University, China.
authors.forename: Nishao
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Yao
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, National Institute of Mental Health, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Xilin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D000072861:Phobia, Social / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Social anxiety; interpretation bias; positive priming