Covariation bias for ambiguous social stimuli in generalized social phobia

The authors investigated whether the negative interpretation bias in generalized social phobia (GSP) reflects and is maintained by illusory correlations. Participants were exposed to descriptions of ambiguous social events, situations involving fear-relevant animals and nature scenes that were randomly paired with negative, positive, or neutral emotional facial expressions. Prior to the experiment, the GSP participants overestimated the contingency social situations-negative outcome, whereas the controls judged negative outcomes as least likely. A posteriori, the GSP participants exhibited an illusory correlation specifically between social cues and negative outcomes. During the experiment, only the controls showed distorted outcome predictions for social situations. Hence, illusory correlations-possibly resulting from acquired associations between social cues and negative consequences-may contribute to a negative interpretation bias in GSP.