Social-evaluative Condition Research Articles

How does social evaluation influence Hot and Cool inhibitory control in adolescence?

The aim of the present study is to examine whether in Hot, i.e., affectively charged contexts, or cool, i.e., affectively neutral contexts, inhibitory control capacity increases or decreases under social evaluation in adolescents and adults. In two experiments, adolescents and young adults completed two Stroop-like tasks under either a social evaluation condition or an alone condition. The social evaluation condition comprised the presence of a peer (Experiment 1) or an expert (Experiment 2) playing the role of an evaluator, while under the alone condition, the task was performed alone. In the Cool Stroop task, participants had to refrain from reading color names to identify the ink color in which the words were printed. In the Hot Stroop task, participants had to determine the emotional expression conveyed by faces from the NimStim database while ignoring the emotion word displayed beneath. The results were similar in both experiments. In adolescents, social evaluation by a peer (Experiment 1) or by an expert (Experience 2) facilitated Hot but not cool inhibitory control. In adults, social evaluation had no effect on Hot or cool inhibitory control. The present findings expand our understanding of the favorable influence of socioemotional context on Hot inhibitory control during adolescence in healthy individuals.

The socially evaluated handgrip test: Introduction of a novel, time-efficient stress protocol

Most widely-used stress-induction procedures (such as the TSST and the Cold Pressor Test) require considerable effort and overhead in terms of preparation, logistics, and staff recruitment. Moreover, while known to reliably induce HPA axis activation, especially when combined with social self-threat, most conventional laboratory stressors cannot be flexibly adapted to elicit either a mainly autonomic or an additional endocrine stress response. Being a promising alternative approach, a new version of the isometric handgrip test enriched by a social-evaluative component was evaluated in the present study.On two consecutive sessions, forty participants (20 women) performed a handgrip task at both 45% (stress) and 10% (control) of maximum voluntary isometric contraction lasting for 3min. During the stress test, continuous visual feedback on performance was given. Participants in the social-evaluative condition (50%) were observed and evaluated by a previously unknown person of the opposite sex, whereas in the standard condition feedback was provided via a computer monitor. Cardiovascular measures (heart rate, blood pressure) as well as additional indices of autonomic reactivity (skin conductance, heart-rate variability) were registered before, during, and after stress induction. Moreover, changes in salivary cortisol and in subjective well-being were assessed.Relative to control, significant increases in cardiovascular and sympathetic activity were found, irrespective of experimental group. Importantly, however, additional social evaluation resulted in elevated cortisol levels. Furthermore, evidence for reduced vagal tone during sustained socially evaluated handgrip emerged. In conclusion, the socially evaluated handgrip test represents a versatile, time-efficient method to induce stress in small laboratory settings.

Cardiovascular and cortisol reactions to acute psychological stress under conditions of high versus low social evaluative threat: associations with the type D personality construct.

Social evaluative threat is an important factor in the cardiovascular response to mental stress. This study examined whether Type D personality, characterized by social inhibition and negative affectivity, is associated with an adverse cardiovascular response to a non-social and social evaluative threat. A total of 2300 students were screened for Type D personality, and 130 were selected for a nonsocial stress exposure condition (31 Type D, 30 non-Type D: 52% female) or a condition high in social evaluative threat (35 Type D, 34 non-Type D: 55% female). Systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP), heart rate (HR), and salivary cortisol were measured. Social evaluative threat resulted in higher cardiovascular responses than the nonsocial challenge (SBP, p = .001, η = 0.092;DBP, p = .006, η = 0.058;HR, p = .006, η = 0.059). The greatest cardiovascular stress reactions were exhibited by Type D participants in the high social evaluation condition; reflected in significant group by condition interactions for SBP (F(1,126) = 7.29, p = .008, η = 0.055), DBP (F(1,126) = 5.23, p = .024, η = 0.040), and HR (F(1,126) = 5.04, p = .027, η = 0.038) reactivity. Only Type Ds in the social condition mounted a positive cortisol response (F(1,33) = 5.07, p = .031, η = 0.133). Type D individuals show different stress reactions depending on the social evaluative nature of the stress exposure. These findings suggest that dysregulation of the stress response in social situations potentially increases cardiovascular disease risk.

The Influence of Social Evaluative Threat on the Putting Stroke in Golf

The goal of this study was to examine the multi-level associations between state anxiety and various indicators of golf putting performance. Participants were 35 amateur golfers who completed golf putting tasks under a neutral condition followed by a social-evaluative condition. Participants were equipped with a highspeed infrared camera to measure various putting stroke parameters. Results of multilevel analyses indicated that the social-evaluative condition was associated with less putter rotation and quicker forward stroke times. A cross-level interaction indicated that golfers with low levels of somatic anxiety holed significantly more putts under pressure compared with baseline, whereas those with high levels of somatic anxiety did not. As well, a significant cross-level interaction indicated that high levels of cognitive anxiety were associated with slower back strokes under pressure. Results are discussed in terms of the complex interaction between psychological variables (i.e., state anxiety) and kinematic performance indicators.

Cerebral cortical dynamics and the quality of motor behavior during social evaluative challenge

To determine the influence of arousal on cerebral cortical dynamics and motor behavior, 58 channels of EEG were recorded in 13 college-age men (n=6) and women during an aiming task performed alone and in a social evaluation condition. Moderate arousal, as measured by heart rate, skin conductance, and self-reported mood, was induced during the social evaluation. In accord with the Yerkes-Dodson Hypothesis, which posits optimal performance during moderate arousal, improved performance (i.e., quality of the aiming trajectories) was observed. During social evaluation, changes in electroencephalogram dynamics included decreased coherence between the motor planning (Fz) and right temporal region (T4), increased coherence in the sensorimotor networks subserving the task, and increased local processing (gamma, 30-44 Hz) in the temporal regions. The results imply that moderate arousal promotes specific alterations in cortical dynamics that facilitate motor performance.

Neural Modulation of Endocrine Stress Response to Social Evaluation

Neural Modulation of Endocrine Stress Response to Social Evaluation

Attentional Bias in Social Anxiety: Manipulation of Stimulus Duration and Social-evaluative Anxiety

This study investigated the nature of pre-attentive and conscious attentional processing to different categories of threatening words in a non-clinical socially anxious sample. Individuals high (n = 41) and low (n = 41) in social avoidance and distress, as measured by the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SAD), performed a visual dot-probe task which included four word groups; negative evaluation, social situations, somatic sensation and physical threat. Participants completed masked trials (14 ms + masking for 486 ms), followed by unmasked trials (500 ms/no mask), under conditions of either social-evaluation or non-evaluation. The results showed that in the social-evaluation condition, high socially anxious individuals, in comparison to the low socially anxious, demonstrated an attentional bias towards masked physical threat words. There were no further attentional processing differences between the social anxiety groups to masked or unmasked stimuli, in either experimental condition. The results suggest that theories of social anxiety might need to accommodate biases to physical threat cues.

The spotlight effect and the illusion of transparency in social anxiety

[Clark, D. M., & Wells, A. (1995). A cognitive model of social phobia. In: R. G. Heimberg, M. R. Liebowitz, D. A. Hope, & F. R. Schneier (Eds.), Social phobia: diagnosis, assessment, and treatment (pp. 69–93). New York: Guildford Press] cognitive model of social phobia suggests that both public and private sources of information contribute to the construction of the self as a social object, which is thought to maintain the disorder. This study used two concepts developed in social psychology that might help to explain the processes that contribute to the development of this constructed self. These two concepts are the spotlight effect [Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (2000). The spotlight effect in social judgment: an egocentric bias in estimates of the salience of one's own actions and appearance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78(2), 211–222] and the illusion of transparency [Gilovich, T., Medvec, V. H., & Savitsky, K. (1998). The Illusion of transparency: biased assessments of others’ ability to read one's own emotional states. Journal of personality and social psychology, 75(2), 332–346]. Participants performed a memory task under either a low or a high social-evaluative condition. In the high social-evaluative condition, participants reported higher levels of the spotlight effect and more negative evaluation of task performance, compared to participants in the low social-evaluative condition. There were no differences between the two conditions in levels of the illusion of transparency. Surprisingly, however, in the low social-evaluative condition, participants reported higher levels of the illusion of transparency than the spotlight effect, whereas, in the high social-evaluative condition, they reported the opposite. Results suggest that the spotlight effect may be specific to social-evaluative concerns, whereas, the illusion of transparency may represent more general features of social anxiety concerns. Implications of the results for Clark and Wells’ cognitive model of social phobia model are discussed.

Acute Threat to the Social Self: Shame, Social Self-esteem, and Cortisol Activity

Our Social Self Preservation Theory asserts that situations which threaten the "social self" (ie, one's social value or standing) elicit increased feelings of low social worth (eg, shame), decrements in social self-esteem, and increases in cortisol, a hormone released by the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. To test our theoretical premise, cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses to the performance of laboratory stressor tasks were compared in participants who performed these tasks in the presence or absence of social-self threat. Pre- and poststressor emotion, self-esteem, heart rate, blood pressure, and salivary cortisol were compared in 81 participants randomly assigned to complete speech and mental arithmetic stress tasks with social evaluation present (n = 41) or absent (n = 40). As hypothesized, participants in the social evaluation condition exhibited greater increases in shame and greater decrements in social self-esteem. Other psychological states (eg, anxiety, performance self-esteem) did not show differential changes as a function of the social context. Salivary cortisol increased in social evaluation condition participants but did not increase in participants who performed the same tasks in the absence of social evaluation. Cortisol increases were greater in participants who experienced greater increases in shame and greater decreases in social self-esteem under social-self threat. Threat to the social self is an important elicitor of shame experience, decreases in social self-esteem and cortisol increases under demanding performance conditions. Cortisol changes may be specifically tied to the experience of emotions and cognitions reflecting low self-worth in this context.

Interactive effects of traits, states, and gender on cardiovascular reactivity during different situations

Interactive effects of anger and anxiety traits, negative affect state, different situations, and gender on cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) to stress were examined. Subjects (91 men, 92 women) performed a reaction time task under either a Social Evaluation, a Harassment, or a Control condition; SBP, DBP, and HR were recorded continuously. Hierarchical multiple regressions revealed intricate interactions. The interaction of anger expression style and anger experience was significant only among men, such that anger suppressors with high trait anger showed the largest CVR of any group during Harassment; anger expressors exhibited generally high CVR across conditions. However, anger expression style and state negative affect interacted to affect CVR in both men and women. Finally, the fear of negative evaluation predicted elevated DBP responses only among men in the Social Evaluation condition. Results imply that the extent to which traits of anger and anxiety contribute to coronary risk may depend on interactions with other traits, gender, and the environment.

Psychological, situational, and gender predictors of cardiovascular reactivity to stress: A multivariate approach

This study examined whether relationships between anger expression, hostility, social evaluative anxiety, and a presumed mechanism for coronary heart disease development, cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) to stress, are moderated by stress situation and gender and whether such relationships are attenuated by inadequate assessments. Subjects (47 men, 47 women) were assigned randomly to either a Harassment or a Social Evaluation condition, under which they performed a reaction time task. SBP, DBP, and HR measures were recorded during baseline and task. Multiple regression analyses indicated that expressed anger was related to CVR only among men in the Harassment condition; that hostile men who express anger showed the most CVR across situations, and that the traits assessed here did not predict CVR among women. Results suggest that assessments of coronary-risk and interventions to reduce risk may need to take into account attitudes, styles of emotional expression, environmental factors, and gender.