The effects of positive, negative and ambiguous feedback on state anxiety and cognitive appraisals in Social Anxiety Disorder.

Abstract

Socially anxious individuals have been reported to display negative interpretive biases towards self-relevant information, particularly for contexts where external information is deemed ambiguous. Despite relatively consistent findings for group differences relative to non-anxious controls, previous studies have not compared responses to ambiguous and unambiguous contexts simultaneously. The present study examined the differential effects of positive, negative and ambiguous feedback on affective experience and cognitive appraisals in a group of socially anxious individuals and non-anxious controls. Following participation in a three-minute impromptu speech task, all participants were provided with standardised feedback after a delay of one week, before being informed that they would participate in a second speech task, which did not actually occur. Results showed that ambiguous feedback was interpreted to be moderately positive by both groups and led to congruent changes in cognitive re-appraisals for the clinical group, but not for controls. Socially anxious individuals who received positive feedback, however, exhibited continued change on cognitive outcomes post-feedback, with significant reductions in performance appraisal and perceived ability. These results are discussed in relation to current cognitive models of Social Anxiety Disorder as well as the availability of distinct self-presentations elicited by external feedback about performance. Treatment implications and directions for future research are also explored.