Impression formation and revision in social anxiety disorder

• We examined impression formation and revision among individuals with SAD and controls.
• Individuals with SAD rated others as more extreme on the social rank dimension.
• Individuals with SAD rated others as lower on the affiliation dimension.
• Individuals with SAD revised their impressions of others to a greater extent.
• Impression formation and revision may play a role in maintaining SAD.

Interpersonal relations are markedly impaired in social anxiety. Yet, little is known about the ways social anxiety affects social cognition. We examined impression formation and impression revision among individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD, n = 26) and non-anxious individuals (n = 29). Participants read initial descriptions of protagonists depicted as dominant, neutral or submissive and rated them on social rank and affiliation dimensions. Next, participants were presented with behavioral acts that were either congruent, incongruent or irrelevant to the initial descriptions, and re-rated the protagonists. Individuals with SAD (a) rated others as more extreme on social rank dimension, (b) rated others as lower on the affiliation dimension, and (c) revised their impressions of others to a greater extent than did the non-anxious individuals. Understanding the ways social anxiety affects the formation and revision of perceptions of others can improve our understanding of maintaining processes in SAD.