Cognitive processes in social anxiety: the effects of self-focus, rumination and anticipatory processing

“…mental “post-mortems” on how the interaction went and how they performed (Abbott & Rapee, 2004; Edwards, Rapee, & Franklin, 2003; Kocovski, Endler, Rector, & Flett, 2005; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Perini, Abbott, & Rapee, 2006; Rachman, Gruter-Andrew, & Shafran, 2000; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997).”

“Among the specific anxiety disorders, rumination is associated with an increased risk for social phobia (Mellings & Alden 2000), posttraumatic stress disorder (Clohessy & Ehlers 1999, Ehlers et al. 1998, Mayou et al. 2002, Murray et al. 2002), and generalized anxiety (McLaughlin & Nolen-Hoeksema…”

“As a result, the individual with SAD anticipates social mishaps and engages in avoidance and/or safety behaviors (Wells et al., 1995), followed by post-event rumination (Mellings & Alden, 2000; Rachmann, Grüter-Andrew, & Shafran 2000).”

“Indeed, studies of people with social phobia find that they do “postmortem” analyses of social encounters, focusing on how they performed and what others think of them (Abbott & Rapee, 2004; Kashdan & Roberts, 2007; Kocovski, Endler, Rector, & Flett, 2005; Mellings & Alden, 2000).”

“…links later ruminative thinking to a stressful interpersonal interaction, again highlighting the important role of stress (Abbot & Rapee, 2004; Edwards, Rapee, & Franklin, 2003; Harvey, Ehlers, & Clark, 2005; Lundh & Sperling, 2002; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Rachman, Gruter-Andrew, & Shafran, 2000).”

“…Lemogne et al., 2010; Lyubomirsky & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1995; Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987; Watkins & Teasdale, 2001), the hyper self-awareness of anxiety (Epel et al., 2009; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Woody, Chambless, & Glass, 1997), and the narrow self-focus of negative emotions (Fredrickson, 2001).”

“As a result, individuals with SAD anticipate social mishaps and engage in avoidance and/or safety behaviors (Wells et al., 1995), followed by post-event rumination (McManus, Sacadura, & Cark, in press; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Rachmann, Grüter-Andrew, & Shafran, 2000).”

“Rumination has been implicated in social phobia, mostly in the form of anticipatory or post-event worry about social situations and experiences (e.g., Abbott & Rapee, 2004; Mellings & Alden, 2000).”

“Cognitive theorists (e.g., Beck et al 1985; Clark and Wells 1995; Hartman 1983; Leary 1983; Mellings and Alden 2000; Rapee and Heimberg 1997; Trower and Gilbert 1989) suggest that an additional maintaining factor is biased information processing.”

“…implicated in the aetiology of a number of psychological disorders, e.g., depression and anxiety (Lyubomirsky, Caldwell, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998; Mellings & Alden, 2000); and associated with increased physical symptom reporting (Hazlett & Haynes, 1992), intrusive off-task thoughts (Sarason,…”

“The role of post-event rumination in the maintenance of social phobia has recently been the focus of theoretical and empirical attention (Abbott & Rapee, 2003; Clark & Wells, 1995; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997).”

“…real-life social events as well as laboratorybased social-evaluative tasks, such as giving a speech (e.g., Abbott & Rapee, 2004; Kocovski, Endler, Rector, & Flett, 2005; Lundh & Sperling, 2002; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Perini, Abbott, & Rapee, 2006; Rachman, Grüter-Andrews, & Shafran, 2000).”

“In keeping with this, cognitive theorists (e.g., Beck, Emery, & Greenberg, 1985; Clark & Wells, 1995; Hartman, 1983; Leary, 1983; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997; Trower & Gilbert, 1989) suggest that biases in information processing may contribute to the maintenance of social phobia.”

“Rumination may also be related to other negative emotions, e.g. anxiety (Blagden & Craske, 1996; Davey, 1995; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000; Roger & Najarian, 1989) and anger (Rusting & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998) or aggression (Caprara, Gargaro, Pastorelli, Prezza, Renzi, & Zelli, 1987;…”

“…anxious individuals tend to over-estimate the visibility of anxiety symptoms (McEwan & Devins, 1983) and believe that outward appearance accurately reflects internal physiological arousal (Man-sell & Clark, 1999; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Papageorgiou & Wells, 2002; Wells & Papageorgiou, 2001).”

“…their performance and overestimate the appearance of negative behaviours relative to individuals with low social anxiety and independent observers (Mellings & Alden, 2000; Rapee & Lim, 1992; Stopa & Clark, 1993), few studies have directly investigated the relationship between subjective…”

“…be implicated in the aetiology of a number of psychological disorders, e.g., depression and anxiety (Lyubomirsky, Caldwall, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998; Mellings & Alden, 2000), and associated with increased physical symptom reporting (Hazlett & Haynes, 1992), intrusive off-task thoughts (Sarason,…”

“Firstly, these results suggest that the negative bias in recall may reflect more of an encoding bias than a retrieval bias ( Mellings & Alden, 2000 ).”

“this bias has been found in studies assessing reported self- focused attention (e.g., Mellings & Alden, 2000 ).”

“Furthermore, there is evidence that repetitive thought about personal concerns occurs in a number of anxiety disorders including social anxiety (e.g., Abbott and Rapee 2004; Mellings and Alden 2000), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; American Psychiatric Association 1994; Hoyer et al.”

“Mellings and Alden (2000) likewise found that “social interaction tasks may lend themselves to encoding biases in socially anxious individuals whereas semantic memory tasks may not” (p. 256).”

“…process (Nolen-Hoeksema & Watkins, 2011) that contributes to a variety of psychopathological conditions or behaviors, including anxiety (Mellings & Alden, 2000), substance abuse (Nolen-Hoeksema, Stice, Wade, & Bohon, 2007), and self-injurious behavior (Hilt, Cha, & Nolen-Hoeksema,…”

“Encouragingly, Mellings and Alden (2000) demonstrated a convergence of self-report and objective measures; they found that recall of external social information (details of conversation partner) was poorest in individuals who reported that they were more self-focused during the interaction.”

“…construct relevant across mood, anxiety, and psychotic disorders (Hartley et al., 2014; Just and Alloy, 1997; McLaughlin and Nolen-Hoeksema, 2011; Mellings and Alden, 2000; Muris et al., 2005; Roelofs et al., 2008; Spasojevic and Alloy, 2001; Surrence et al., 2009; Wolkenstein et al., 2014).”

“In contrast, Mellings and Alden (2000) used a 10-min ‘‘getting acquainted’’ interaction between participants and trained confederates.”

“In this context, rumination has been implicated in the development of a number of psychological disorders, for example, depression and anxiety (Lyubomirsky, Caldwell, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998; Mellings & Alden, 2000).”

“Second, individuals having abundant interpersonal difficulties do enjoy being with people, but their social behavior is constrained by their heightened concerns over unfavorable evaluations from others (e.g., Mellings & Alden, 2000).”

“Rumination has been associated with different psychological states including: depression (Nolen-Hoeksema, 1991), anxiety (Mellings & Alden, 2000), anger (Hogan & Linden, 2004; Rusting & NolenHoeksema, 1998), and negative affect (Thomsen et al., 2004).”

“…a burgeoning corpus of literature has underscored the relevance of post-event rumination and worry to social anxiety disorder as possible mechanisms that engender emotional avoidance (Edwards et al. 2003; Abbott and Rapee 2004; Wells and Carter 2002; Rachman et al. 2000; Mellings and Alden 2000).”

“With respect to the definitions utilised by Harvey et al. (2004) when assessing the quality of the evidence for transdiagnostic processes, these findings suggest that dysregulation of level of goal/action identification is a possible transdiagnostic process (defined when the majority of the evidence, which must be of…”

“…difficulties engaging away from threat or negative material (Donaldson et al. 2007; Verkuil et al. 2009), misinterpretation of social interactions (Mellings & Alden, 2000; Donaldson & Lam, 2004), attempts at avoidance (Cribb et al. 2006; Moulds et al. 2007) and increased cognitive intrusions…”

“…Lyubomirsky, 2008), including depression (Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schweizer, 2010; Rood, Roelofs, Bogels, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schouten, 2009), anxiety (Mellings & Alden, 2000; Verstraeten, Bijttebier, Vasey, & Raes, 2011), binge eating (Nolen-Hoeksema, Stice, Wade, & Bohon, 2007), binge drinking…”

“Furthermore, Mellings and Alden (2000) reported that the frequency of post-event rumination predicted the recall of negative self related information about the interaction in an open ended memory task, suggesting that post-event rumination may be an important maintaining factor in social anxiety.”

“…et al. , 2008), whereas rumination about a traumatic event is predominantly focused on the causes and consequences of this negative life event (Michael et al. , 2007), and rumination in social anxiety is focused on concerns about performance in social situations (Mellings & Alden, 2000).”

“…bias toward threat cues, engage in negatively biased judgments of social events, and ruminate about perceived social failures, thereby consolidating negatively distorted judgments in memory (e.g., Bögels & Mansell, 2004; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Pineles & Mineka, 2005; Veljaca & Rapee, 1998).”

“…increased self-attention with reduced processing of external cues (Mansell, Clark, Ehlers, & Chen, 1999; Saboonchi, Lundh, & Ost, 1999) or the exaggerated use of internal information for the conclusion about one’s own impression (Mellings & Alden, 2000; Mulkens, de Jong, Dobbelaar, & Bögels, 1999).”

“Research demonstrates that PEP is positively correlated with social anxiety and leads to avoidance of similar social interactions (Edwards, Rapee, & Franklin, 2003; Lundh & Sperling, 2002; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Rachman, Gruter-Andrew, & Shafran, 2000).”

“Mellings and Alden (2000) assessed ruminative thinking directly after an interaction situation as well as 1 day later.”

“…positive correlation between social anxiety symptomatology and self-reported recall of PER has been replicated by a number of subsequent studies (Fehm, Schneider, & Hoyer, 2007; Kocovski, Endler, Rector, & Flett, 2005; Kocovski & Rector, 2007, 2008; Lundh & Sperling, 2002; Mellings & Alden, 2000).”

“…have been reported in adult studies (Clohessy & Ehlers, 1999; Fresco, Frankel, Mennin, Turk, & Heimberg, 2002; Harrington & Blankenship, 2002; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Nolen-Hoeksema & Morrow, 1991), and recent evidence suggests that rumination predicts subsequent increases in anxiety…”

“Greater rumination for those higher in social anxiety has been found for a social interaction (Mellings & Alden, 2000) and an impromptu speech task (Abbott & Rapee, 2004; Edwards, Rapee, & Franklin, 2003).”

“Appraisals of an event cannot only change emotions about an event but can also change how an event is remembered (e.g., Gross, 2002; Levine, 1997; Levine, Prohaska, Burgess, Rice, & Laulhere, 2001) and how often we think of it (e.g., Mellings & Alden, 2000; Schartau, Dalgleish, & Dunn, 2009).”

“…is also accumulating that self-focused attention is associated with emotional disorders in general and social anxiety in particular (Bögels & Mansell, 2004; Mansell, Clark, & Ehlers, 2003; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Mor & Winquist, 2002; Pineles & Mineka, 2005; Woody, 1996; Woody & Rodriquez, 2000).”

“, 2003) or any social activity that requires interactions with others (Mellings and Alden, 2000).”

“Mellings and Alden also found that frequency of postevent rumination predicted recall of negative self-related information in a memory task performed 1 day after a stressful social interaction in SAD patients [35].”

“However, Mellings and Alden ( 2000 ) failed to find any experimental evidence supporting their prediction that socially anxious subjects anticipating a second interaction will display signs of selective retrieval of negative information about the initial interaction.”

“…& Stein, 1994; Foa, Gilboa-Schechtman, Amir, & Freshman, 2000; Gilboa-Schechtman, Foa, & Amir, 1999; Hackmann, Clark, & McManus, 2000; Mattia, Heimberg, & Hope, 1993) and interpretative biases for socially relevant information (Alden & Wallace, 1995; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Stopa & Clark, 2000).”

“A strong correlation between depressive states and rumination has been observed by a number of researchers, who have shown that ruminators have devaluating and anxious thoughts (Mellings and Aldens 2000 ).”

“Socially anxious individuals have been found to ruminate more about social events (Field & Cartwright-Hatton, 2008; Kocovski & Rector, 2007; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Rachman, Grüter-Andrew, & Shafran, 2000; Vassilopoulos, 2008), and it is possible that they would also engage in co-ruminative…”

“Although the ‘‘getting acquainted task’’ has been widely used to study social anxiety (Alden & Wallace, 1995; Mellings & Alden, 2000; Turner, Beidel, & Larkin, 1986) and did lead to increases arousal in the current study, a more stressful social task, such as an impromptu speech, might be needed to…”

“In contrast to prior studies examining general social activity by self-report (e.g., Burger & Caldwell, 2000; Reis, Sheldon, Gable, Roscoe, & Ryan, 2000; Watson et al., 1992) and unstructured open-ended “getting acquainted” interactions (e.g., Heimberg, Mueller, Holt, Hope, & Liebowitz, 1992; Mellings & Alden, 2000 ),…”

“Post-event processing has been shown to influence participants’ memory for subsequent material, with ruminative or elaborative processing associated with enhanced recall of negative material (e.g., Mellings and Alden 2000; Morgan and Banerjee 2008).”

“However, Mellings and Alden (2000) failed to find any experimental evidence supporting their prediction that socially anxious subjects anticipating a second interaction will display signs of selective retrieval of negative information about the initial interaction.”

“Thus, using a real social exposure and allowing time for post-event processing led both Mellings and Alden (2000) and Edwards et al. (2003) to find evidence for a memory bias favoring the recall of negative self-relevant information in high socially anxious participants.”

“…individuals typically show reduced processing of external social information and increased self-focused attention during social interactions (e.g. Daly, Vangelisti, & Lawrence, 1989; Hope, Heimberg, & Klein, 1990; Kimble & Zehr, 1982; Mansell, Clark, Ehlers, & Chen, 1999; Mellings & Alden, 2000).”

“Rumination as a construct has been researched in clinical and health settings for many years, with results implicating rumination in the development of a number of psychological disorders, for example, depression and anxiety (Lyubomirsky, Caldwell, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 1998; Mellings & Alden, 2000).”

“Mellings and Alden (2000) examined participants' recall of a role-played social interaction conducted the previous day.”