Erratum to: A New Measure of the Maladaptive Self-Beliefs in Social Anxiety: Psychometric Properties in a Non-Clinical Sample

Metacognition, cognition and social anxiety: A test of temporal and reciprocal relationships

Cognitive models of social anxiety give prominence to dysfunctional schemas about the social self as the key underlying factors in maladaptive self-processing strategies and social anxiety symptoms. In contrast, the metacognitive model argues that beliefs about cognition represent a central belief domain underlying psychopathology and cognitive schemas as products of a thinking style regulated by metacognition. The present study therefore evaluated the temporal and reciprocal relations between metacognitive beliefs, social self-beliefs, and social anxiety symptoms to shed light on possible causal relationships among them. Eight hundred and sixty-eight individuals gathered at convenience participated in a four-wave online survey with each measurement wave 6 weeks apart. Using autoregressive cross-lagged panel models, we found significant temporal and reciprocal relations between metacognition, social self-beliefs (schemas), and social anxiety. Whilst social self-beliefs prospectively predicted social anxiety this relationship was reciprocal. Metacognitive beliefs prospectively predicted both social interaction anxiety and social self-beliefs, but this was not reciprocal. The results are consistent with metacognitive beliefs causing social anxiety and social self-beliefs and imply that negative social self-beliefs might be a product of metacognition. The clinical implications are that metacognitive beliefs should be the central target in treatments of social anxiety.

Bridging maladaptive social self-beliefs and social anxiety: a network perspective

The Clark and Wells (1995) model of social anxiety disorder postulates that three types of maladaptive social self-beliefs (high standard, conditional, and unconditional beliefs) play a crucial role in the development of fear and avoidance of social-evaluative situations-i.e., the hallmark symptoms of social anxiety disorder. In this project, we examined associations between the three types of maladaptive social self-beliefs and fear and avoidance of social-evaluative situations in a nonclinical community sample (n = 389). We used network analysis to estimate functional relations among aspects of maladaptive self-beliefs, fear, and avoidance and computed two different network models, a graphical Gaussian model (GGM) and a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Each model estimates edges and the importance of nodes in different ways. Both GGM and DAG pointed to fear and conditional beliefs as especially potent bridges between maladaptive social self-beliefs and social anxiety in our nonclinical sample. Altogether, these results offer data-driven heuristics in the field's larger, ongoing effort to illuminate pathways at play in the development of social anxiety. We situate this study within novel network approaches for developing theory-driven models and tests of the instigation and interactions of maladaptive social self-beliefs and social anxiety. However, because this is the first study to combine GGM and DAG in social anxiety research, we also discussed the caveats to this approach to help to usher the field forward.

Unique Relationships Between Self-Related Constructs, Social Anxiety, and Depression in a Non-Clinical Sample

Self-related constructs feature prominently in cognitive models of both social anxiety and depression. However, few studies have simultaneously investigated the unique relationship between self-related constructs and social anxiety and depression, while also controlling for the association between the two variables. In the present study, 522 undergraduate students completed measures of maladaptive self-beliefs, self-esteem, self-criticism, self-focused attention, self-concept clarity, social comparison, and social anxiety and depression. Bivariate correlations demonstrated that self-related constructs not only significantly correlated with social anxiety but also with depression and other self-variables. When entered simultaneously, multiple regression analyses indicated that maladaptive self-beliefs were uniquely and positively associated with social anxiety and depression, while self-esteem and self-concept clarity were uniquely and negatively associated with social anxiety and depression. A unique positive association between private self-consciousness and depression was also found. Maladaptive self-beliefs and self-esteem were the constructs most strongly associated with social anxiety and depression respectively. These findings underscore the importance of a negative self-concept even in subclinical presentations and suggest that several key self-related constructs may represent transdiagnostic vulnerability factors linking social anxiety and depression. Future research should continue to uncover unique relationships between self-related variables and social anxiety and depression in both clinical and non-clinical samples.

The development of Negative Self-Beliefs Inventory (NSBI): cultural adaptation and psychometric validation

Social anxiety is an emotional disorder common to various populations around the world. The newly developed Self-Beliefs Related to Social Anxiety Scale (SBSA) aims to assess three kinds of self-beliefs through 15 items that include self-related cognitive factors that evidently result in social anxiety. This study explored the psychometric characteristics of SBSA among 978 Chinese. An eight-item Negative Self-beliefs Inventory (NSBI) was developed through qualitative and quantitative analyses. Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and multi-group confirmatory factor analysis suggested that NSBI contained clear, meaningful, stable, and invariant three-factor structure consistent with the original SBSA. Further analyses showed that the three subscales and the entire scale exhibited high internal consistency (0.779–0.837), good criterion validity, and good convergent and divergent validity (i.e., negative associations with flourishing and positive associations with anxiety, depression, and stress). These findings indicated that NSBI is reliable and valid for measuring negative self-beliefs in the Chinese population. A higher total score of NSBI indicates the more serious negative self-beliefs. Limitations of the present study and implications for research and practice were also discussed. Further studies are needed to evaluate the predictive ability, incremental validity, and potential role of NSBI in clinical and large-scale populations.

Maladaptive social self-beliefs in alcohol-dependence: a specific bias towards excessive high standards

BACKGROUND

Emotional and interpersonal impairments associated with alcohol-dependence have been recently explored, but the distorted cognitive representations underlying these deficits remain poorly understood. The present study aims at exploring the presence of maladaptive social self-beliefs among alcohol-dependent individuals, as these biased self-beliefs have been recently shown to play a crucial role in the development and maintenance of other psychopathological states (social anxiety and depression).

METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

Twenty-five recently detoxified alcohol-dependent participants and 25 matched controls filled in self-report questionnaires evaluating maladaptive social self-beliefs, interpersonal problems and several comorbid states (anxiety, social anxiety, depression). As compared to controls, alcohol-dependent individuals showed higher scores than controls for the three subcategories of maladaptive social self-beliefs (high standards, conditional beliefs and unconditional beliefs). Our key finding was that when comorbidities were controlled for, alcohol-dependence was associated with a specific bias towards exaggerated high standards in social contexts. Moreover, these high standards beliefs were strongly correlated with interpersonal problems.

CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE

These results provide the first insights into the influence of cognitive biases on interpersonal problems in addictive states, and suggest that maladaptive self-beliefs could have a central influence on the development and maintenance of alcohol-dependence.

Processing mode during repetitive thinking in socially anxious individuals: evidence for a maladaptive experiential mode

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Evidence from the depression literature suggests that an analytical processing mode adopted during repetitive thinking leads to maladaptive outcomes relative to an experiential processing mode. To date, in socially anxious individuals, the impact of processing mode during repetitive thinking related to an actual social-evaluative situation has not been investigated. We thus tested whether an analytical processing mode would be maladaptive relative to an experiential processing mode during anticipatory processing and post-event rumination.

METHODS

High and low socially anxious participants were induced to engage in either an analytical or experiential processing mode during: (a) anticipatory processing before performing a speech (Experiment 1; N = 94), or (b) post-event rumination after performing a speech (Experiment 2; N = 74). Mood, cognition, and behavioural measures were employed to examine the effects of processing mode.

RESULTS

For high socially anxious participants, the modes had a similar effect on self-reported anxiety during both anticipatory processing and post-event rumination. Unexpectedly, relative to the analytical mode, the experiential mode led to stronger high standard and conditional beliefs during anticipatory processing, and stronger unconditional beliefs during post-event rumination.

LIMITATIONS

These experiments are the first to investigate processing mode during anticipatory processing and post-event rumination. Hence, these results are novel and will need to be replicated.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings suggest that an experiential processing mode is maladaptive relative to an analytical processing mode during repetitive thinking characteristic of socially anxious individuals.