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Anxious but Thoroughly Informed? No Jumping-to-Conclusions Bias in Social Anxiety Disorder

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Abstract

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is maintained by biased information processing, which might involve hasty decision making. This study tested whether SAD is associated with jumping-to-conclusions in neutral and socially threatening situations. Sixty participants with SAD and 56 healthy controls completed a beads-task and a Social Beads-Task (SBT) with neutral, threat-relevant, and self-relevant situations. Dependent variables were draws to decision (DTD) and certainty about the decision. In the beads-task, participants with SAD showed more DTD than controls. In the SBT, all participants drew fewer beads in threat- and self-relevant situations than in neutral scenarios. Participants with SAD reported higher certainty regarding their decision in the beads-task and in the threat- and self-relevant scenarios of the SBT. Jumping-to-conclusions increases when decision making is framed in a threatening or social-evaluative context. SAD may be linked to more certainty about decisions, but findings on group differences require further investigation.

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Correspondence to Björn Schlier.

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Björn Schlier, Sylvia Helbig-Lang, and Tania Lincoln declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Schlier, B., Helbig-Lang, S. & Lincoln, T.M. Anxious but Thoroughly Informed? No Jumping-to-Conclusions Bias in Social Anxiety Disorder. Cogn Ther Res 40, 46–56 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-015-9724-2

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