The self through the social mirror: Negative updating of self beliefs in social anxiety disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a highly prevalent and impairing condition characterized by negative self-beliefs and interpersonal difficulties. Enhanced updating of self-beliefs in response to negative social feedback is theorized to play a critical role in the persistence of SAD. A widely established framework in personality psychology, the “Big Two” suggests that the dimensions of agency and communion underlie the structure of self-beliefs. Previous research that overlooks this distinction has revealed inconsistent findings. The current study examined belief updating in a highly self-relevant context: feedback about personality traits. Clinically diagnosed individuals with SAD (n = 95) and non-clinical controls (NCC, n = 87) completed a social feedback task. In this task, participants learned how others perceived their agentic (e.g., competent, charismatic) and communal (e.g., warm, sensitive) traits while receiving mostly negative feedback. Compared to NCCs, individuals with SAD showed enhanced negative updating of agentic, but not communal- self-beliefs. This effect remained significant after controlling for depression severity and initial self-beliefs. In the SAD group and across the sample, depression severity was linked to enhanced updating in both domains. These updating patterns may perpetuate intrapersonal and interpersonal cycles that maintain negative self-beliefs in these conditions. Integrating the research on the “Big Two” personality dimensions with cognitive and evolutionary theories may help characterize biased cognitive processing in SAD.