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Conditioned Subjective Responses to Socially Relevant Stimuli in Social Anxiety Disorder and Subclinical Social Anxiety
Author(s) -
TinocoGonzález Daniella,
Fullana Miquel Angel,
TorrentsRodas David,
Bonillo Albert,
Vervliet Bram,
Pailhez Guillem,
Farré Magí,
Andión Oscar,
Perez Víctor,
Torrubia Rafael
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
clinical psychology and psychotherapy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.315
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1099-0879
pISSN - 1063-3995
DOI - 10.1002/cpp.1883
Subject(s) - psychology , social anxiety , anxiety , social inhibition , arousal , panic disorder , phobic disorder , anxiety disorder , subclinical infection , fear conditioning , shyness , clinical psychology , conditioning , agoraphobia , developmental psychology , psychiatry , social psychology , medicine , statistics , mathematics
Although enhanced fear conditioning has been implicated in the origins of social anxiety disorder (SAD), laboratory evidence in support of this association is limited. Using a paradigm employing socially relevant unconditioned stimuli, we conducted two separate studies to asses fear conditioning in individuals with SAD and non‐clinical individuals with high social anxiety (subclinical social anxiety [SSA]). They were compared with age‐matched and gender‐matched individuals with another anxiety disorder (panic disorder with agoraphobia) and healthy controls (Study 1) and with individuals with low social anxiety (Study 2). Contrary to our expectations, in both studies, self‐report measures (ratings of anxiety, unpleasantness and arousal to the conditioned stimuli) of fear conditioning failed to discriminate between SAD or SSA and the other participant groups. Our results suggest that enhanced fear conditioning does not play a major role in pathological social anxiety. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Message We used a social conditioning paradigm to study fear conditioning in clinical and subclinical social anxiety. We found no evidence of enhanced fear conditioning in social anxiety individuals. Enhanced fear conditioning may not be a hallmark of pathological social anxiety.