Button Katherine S, Kounali Daphne, Stapinski Lexine, Rapee Ronald M, Lewis Glyn, Munafò Marcus R
School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
National Drug & Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.
PLoS One. 2015 Apr 8;10(4):e0119456. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0119456. eCollection 2015.
Fear of negative evaluation (FNE) defines social anxiety yet the process of inferring social evaluation, and its potential role in maintaining social anxiety, is poorly understood. We developed an instrumental learning task to model social evaluation learning, predicting that FNE would specifically bias learning about the self but not others.
During six test blocks (3 self-referential, 3 other-referential), participants (n = 100) met six personas and selected a word from a positive/negative pair to finish their social evaluation sentences "I think [you are / George is]…". Feedback contingencies corresponded to 3 rules, liked, neutral and disliked, with P[positive word correct] = 0.8, 0.5 and 0.2, respectively.
As FNE increased participants selected fewer positive words (β = -0.4, 95% CI -0.7, -0.2, p = 0.001), which was strongest in the self-referential condition (FNE × condition 0.28, 95% CI 0.01, 0.54, p = 0.04), and the neutral and dislike rules (FNE × condition × rule, p = 0.07). At low FNE the proportion of positive words selected for self-neutral and self-disliked greatly exceeded the feedback contingency, indicating poor learning, which improved as FNE increased.
FNE is associated with differences in processing social-evaluative information specifically about the self. At low FNE this manifests as insensitivity to learning negative self-referential evaluation. High FNE individuals are equally sensitive to learning positive or negative evaluation, which although objectively more accurate, may have detrimental effects on mental health.
对负面评价的恐惧（FNE）定义了社交焦虑，但推断社会评价的过程及其在维持社交焦虑中的潜在作用却鲜为人知。我们开发了一项工具性学习任务来模拟社会评价学习，预测FNE会特别影响关于自我而非他人的学习。
在六个测试阶段（3个自我参照阶段，3个他人参照阶段），参与者（n = 100）与六个角色见面，并从一对积极/消极词汇中选择一个来完成他们的社会评价句子“我认为[你是/乔治是]……”。反馈条件对应3条规则，即喜欢、中立和不喜欢，P[正确选择积极词汇]分别为0.8、0.5和0.2。
随着FNE的增加，参与者选择的积极词汇减少（β = -0.4，95%置信区间 -0.7，-0.2，p = 0.001），这在自我参照条件下最为明显（FNE×条件 0.28，95%置信区间 0.01，0.54，p = 0.04），在中立和不喜欢规则下也有体现（FNE×条件×规则，p = 0.07）。在低FNE水平时，为自我中立和自我不喜欢选择的积极词汇比例大大超过反馈条件，表明学习效果不佳，随着FNE的增加这种情况有所改善。
FNE与处理特别是关于自我的社会评价信息的差异有关。在低FNE水平下，这表现为对学习负面自我参照评价不敏感。高FNE个体对学习积极或消极评价同样敏感，这虽然在客观上更准确，但可能对心理健康有不利影响。
