Cognitive Bias In Fear Of Positive Evaluation Of Social Anxiety Individuals

Weeks and other researchers made the integration of the concept of fear of evaluation(FE)in 2008.It is believed that while social anxiety(SA)individuals are afraid of negative evaluations from others(fear of negative evaluations,FNE);there also exist the fear of positive evaluations.therefore,the concept of fear of positive evaluation(FPE)was further proposed,Based on this concept,FPE and FNE are independent structures which can both be regarded as the core cognitive characteristics of social anxiety.Therefore,further research is required to verify how were the characteristics of FPE embodied in SA individual’s attentional and interpretation bias,as well as the relationship between their attentional bias and interpretation bias.Therefore,In experiment 1,30 subjects were selected as high SA level group and 30 subjects as low SA level group by the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale(SIAS),eye-tracking technique was adapted,combing the ambiguous context paradigm with the passive fixation paradigm.So it can be observed that whether subjects with high and low SA level have attentional bias to the positive facial stimuli that represent positive social evaluation in the ambiguous social situations,and the characteristics of fixation process would also be discussed.Experiment 2 also selected 30 subjects as high SA level group and 30 subjects as low SA level group by using SIAS,the Word Sentence Association Paradigm was adapted to observe the characteristic of interpretation bias of high and low social anxiety groups shown while interpretating ambiguous social situations.Finally,based on the results,the relationship between the attentional bias and the interpretation bias in FPE of social anxiety is further explored,and their impacts on the generation and maintenance of social anxiety are clarified.The results revealed that :(1)compared with individuals with low SA level(LSA),individuals with high SA level(HSA)have lower first fixation latency bias scores,and their first duration bias scores and gaze duration bias scores in 500 ms condition are higher;(2)The benign interpretation bias scores of HSA individuals are significantly smaller than the scores of LSA individuals,HSA Individuals endorsed more threat interpretations and fewer benign interpretations than LSA individuals under the condition of social ambiguous sentences.In summary,the following conclusions are drew:(1)HSA individuals have attentional bias towards positive faces that representing positive evaluation,which specificly revealed facilitated attention and difficulty indisengaging in early phases,and attentional avoidance in later phases,which shows the cognitive characteristics of FPE;(2)When exposed to ambiguous social situations,Not only does HSA individuals have threat interpretation bias,but their benign interpretationbias are also inadequate compared to LSA individuals,which shows the cognitive characteristics of FPE as well;(3)It is also confirmed that the interaction effect of attentional bias and interpretation bias contribute to the generation and maintenance of social anxiety together.Attentional bias prevents individuals from fully processing positive evaluation information,resulting in more threat interpretation bias and lack of benign interpretation bias,which in turn will further strengthen the level of social anxiety,These two elements together would further strengthen the level of FPE individuals,and aggravate the vicious circle of anxiety.