Social anxiety: An examination of the relationships between perspective taking, attribution bias and negative interpretation bias

Abstract

Research shows that individuals with social anxiety are frequently affected by various cognitive biases in the development and maintenance of their anxiety. Lately, an interest has also emerged in the role point of view plays in this disorder; whether field or observer perspective influences socials anxiety. The present study aims to examine the relationships between perspective taking, social anxiety, attribution bias, and negative interpretation bias, in a non-clinical population of 47 university students. The expectation was that individuals with more social anxiety would experience less self-serving bias and vice versa. Moreover, expected was that when higher socially anxious individuals use a field perspective, they would experience less negative interpretation bias than in an observer perspective. Finally, perspective was expected to have a smaller effect on the relationship between self-serving bias and negative interpretation bias in the group with more self-serving bias as opposed to the group with less. Participants were trained in two perspectives, field and observer, completed a recognition task twice and filled out questionnaires. The results showed that there was no effect of perspective on negative interpretation bias or the relationship between the cognitive biases. However, more socially anxious individuals did experience less self-serving bias than less socially anxious individuals. Limitations of the current study are the sample size, a non-clinical population and the potential gap between the lemon training exercise and imagining a social situation. Implications for future research are examining multiple aspects of perspective, considering the role of image manipulation and using a clinical, more representative, larger sample for sufficient power.