Social anxiety and depression appear to change the way we process feedback
A new study reveals how social anxiety and depression distort the way people update their self-beliefs in response to feedback. While social anxiety amplifies negative judgments about competence, depression makes it difficult to accept positive feedback entirely.
People suffering from social anxiety and depression exhibit unique ways of processing feedback about their personalities. A study published in *Behaviour Research and Therapy* reveals that while social anxiety is linked to a tendency to internalize negative feedback about competence, depression is associated with a reduced ability to accept positive feedback about any aspect of personality.
Self-image is not static; it is continuously adjusted based on social feedback through a process termed belief updating. This updating, guided by self-verification theory, involves maintaining a consistent self-image by accepting or rejecting feedback that aligns or contradicts existing beliefs. Psychologists use Bayesian updating to model this process, where high confidence in a prior belief makes it difficult for new evidence to change it. Conversely, feedback that confirms expectations is readily assimilated into a person's worldview.
Researchers at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, led by Zohar Klein and Reut Zabag, investigated how social anxiety and depression influence the ways individuals update specific types of self-beliefs. Their study involved 560 adults in the United States who completed questionnaires to measure social anxiety and depression symptoms.
Participants then engaged in the SocialMirror task, where they received feedback on personality traits, half of which pertained to agency (e.g., being strong or assertive) and the other half to communion (e.g., being pleasant or caring).
During the task, participants guessed whether the software considered each trait characteristic of them. Following a negative feedback phase where 80% of the feedback was negative, socially anxious participants updated their beliefs more negatively when the feedback targeted their agency traits, showing heightened sensitivity to information about competence or status.
However, this increased sensitivity did not extend to communal traits. In contrast, during a positive feedback phase where the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, individuals with depression updated their beliefs less than others, blocking out positive information regardless of whether it pertained to agency or communion traits.
These distinct patterns suggest that therapy for social anxiety might focus on challenging the importance of status and competence, helping individuals critically evaluate negative feedback to protect self-esteem. For individuals with depression, therapy could emphasize increasing openness to positive information, using methods such as introducing mild positive feedback to encourage belief updating.
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