Unconditional Beliefs Research Articles

The Environmental Agenda in the Election Programs of Russian Political Parties

The article is devoted to the study of environmental agenda in the Russian political field on the example of the analysis of the election programs of Russian political parties. The study analyzes the factors and features of the inclusion of the environmental issues in the political programs of Russian political parties. The main environmental problems raised by political parties and the dynamics of its considering were highlighted, and the specific of their discursive representation were analyzed. The study revealed the following features of the appeal of political actors to environmental issues: techno-utopianism as an unconditional belief in “green technologies” that does not imply major institutional changes; eco-populism, manifested in the connection of environmental problems with more popular social issues; ritualization as a formal mention of the “green” agenda, which does not receive careful consideration. Special attention was paid to the (un)formation of the climate agenda in Russia, which showed the limitations of the global process influence on the Russian political agenda. The study was carried out on the basis of a qualitative methodology.

Establishing a Dignity Scale - Measuring Intrinsic Value within Social Contexts

In this paper we describe the basics of the measurement of human dignity at the individual level, as well as within social contexts such as teams and organizations. In accordance with the prevailing literature, we define human dignity as the unconditional belief in the intrinsic value of life. Based on this, we established a model that understands dignity as a latent construct by evaluating personal sense of worth as well as behaviors that either violate or honor such an intrinsic value in social contexts. We developed and tested a 3-factor measure of dignity. The first factor assessed a personal sense of dignity (individual level), the second the extent to which leadership honors dignity and how work teams themselves express dignity to their members. The third factor assessed the extent to which the organizational culture honors and protects the dignity of its members. We examined the internal reliability, temporal stability, convergent, divergent, and predictive validity of our scales and presented a psychometrically sound assessment tool of intrinsic value for organizations, teams, and individuals.

Innovative ways of illustrating the present, imagining the future and analysing themes: A collage-elicited interview study

Mammalian predators are threatening New Zealand’s endemic species with extinction. Community-led predator control may contribute to a predator-free nation by 2050. An individual’s present and future thoughts about, and subsequent actions for, conservation rely on their current and projected motivations and concerns. Innovative approaches to conservation action theme elicitation and analysis were developed through this visual arts based qualitative study to better understand how people feel about the present and future and their place within. Twenty-five males and females from New Zealand’s rural and urban communities, aged between 12 and 75 years, from primary, secondary and tertiary student, environmental education and community conservation backgrounds, each created two collages of themselves situated in today’s and a future world. Interviewer-led open-ended laddering questions elicited participant responses to their collages. A further open-ended question elicited actions participants would take to move from their perceived present to a projected future world. Trello, a web-based list-making application, facilitated reflexive thematic analysis of the interview transcripts. The following six common themes resulted: connectivity, commitment, learning cycle, practical actions, unconditional belief and group action. These themes, presented as eight-point Likert-type scale items in a Qualtrics digital survey, contributed to the quantitative aspect of this mixed-methods study and may facilitate understanding of future New Zealand volunteer community conservation participation.

Lenin’s Memorization as a Hierotopic Project

This article traces the implementation of the concept of ‘temple consciousness’ in hierotopic processes, including the construction of monuments and the organization of memorial sites. The memorials were designed to stand as an eternal reminder of an event that was experienced as a common heroic story in its symbolic representation. The study shows the transit and transformation of memorial discourse in the Soviet and post-Soviet symbolic spaces, which manifested itself in the redefinition of memorial sites in the direction of either actualization or levelling of the cultural and historical memory, given the dominant ideological paradigm. The sources of research, in addition to architectural and artistic monuments, include the mythopoetics of the mass culture, which also acts as a projection of ideology and contains archetypal patterns of the collective unconscious.Lenin’s memorialization as ‘the leader of the world proletariat’ became useful. The memorial policy of the Bolshevik Party was influenced by the ideas and events that took place back in history, including the discovery of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in Luxor (1922) and the teachings of Russian cosmologist Nikolai Fedorov in the work Philosophy of Common Cause published in full in 1913. The use of religion should point to key preconditions that have ensured the development of Soviet ideology which should be codified through the dominance of religion, in particular as ‘political religion’ or ‘secular religion’. The peculiarity of this phenomenon is the merging of two forms of thinking: political and religious.In addition, the Bolshevik atheists allowed the bodily resurrection of Lenin considering their unconditional belief in the “science of the future”; incidentally, they were not mistaken, because the leader’s body, engaged in the research work, survived until the invention of the cloning procedure. The secularized religious energy was mobilized to achieve political goals, which made possible the implementation of a totalitarian system, revealing the imitative essence of totalitarianism, which parasitized on religious thinking. Lenin’s Mausoleum is seen as a reliquary temple in the view of the communist cult of Eternity, which became the basis of Lenin’s cult.The levelling of the cult of Lenin began in the 1970s, which was facilitated by the pompous celebration of his 100th anniversary, which gave rise to political anecdotes as a symptom of the destruction of Lenin’s myth. The Revolution of Dignity (2013–2014) in Ukraine contributed to the dismantling of monuments to Lenin which were seen as personifications of Soviet-style ‘Leninism’ and symbols of imperial-Russian oppression.The purpose of this article is to substantiate the legitimacy of the author’s proposed concept of ‘political hierotopy’.

Understanding the Dynamic Interaction of Maladaptive Social-Evaluative Beliefs and Social Anxiety: A Latent Change Score Model Approach

There is a paucity of research that has examined the dynamic relationship between maladaptive social-evaluative beliefs and social anxiety. Thus, this study aimed to use latent change score models to examine changes in three theory-driven maladaptive social-evaluative belief types (i.e., conditional, unconditional, and high standard beliefs) and their relationship with social anxiety changes in the real-world, day-to-day life contexts of a community sample of individuals with elevated social anxiety (N = 73). Individuals completed one daily assessment of the three belief types and social anxiety symptoms over 4 days. Only the measures of social anxiety, unconditional beliefs, and high standard beliefs were found to have invariant measurement properties across time. As such, latent change score models were only examined for these measures. These models ultimately showed that greater increases in high standard beliefs predicted greater increases in social anxiety the subsequent day. Additionally, greater increases in social anxiety predicted smaller increases or declines in high standard beliefs the next day. Changes in unconditional beliefs were unrelated to social anxiety changes the next day, and changes in social anxiety were unrelated to next day changes in unconditional beliefs. These findings suggest high standard beliefs play a prominent role in the dynamics involving social anxiety and provide a basis for future research to further understand the interaction between these constructs.

Psychometric properties of the Self-Beliefs related to Social Anxiety (SBSA) scale in a sample of individuals with social anxiety disorder

The Self-Beliefs related to Social Anxiety (SBSA) scale assesses maladaptive social-evaluative beliefs, a key aspect in models of social anxiety disorder (SAD) that is frequently measured in research and clinical contexts. The SBSA has been evaluated psychometrically in student samples, but not in a large sample of individuals diagnosed with SAD. The current study tested the psychometric properties of the SBSA in a sample of individuals with SAD pooled from several studies (total N = 284). Results showed that the optimal factor structure for the SBSA was a correlated three-factor model (high standard beliefs factor, conditional beliefs factor, unconditional beliefs factor). The SBSA total and its subscales (formed based on the factors) exhibited good internal consistency. In terms of construct validity, the SBSA total, the high standard beliefs subscale, and conditional beliefs subscale had stronger associations with a measure of social anxiety than with a measure of depression, although the unconditional beliefs subscale was similarly related to both measures of social anxiety and depression. In terms of discriminative validity, the sample of individuals with SAD had higher SBSA total and subscale scores compared with a sample of individuals without SAD (N = 32). These findings provide a psychometric evidence base justifying the use of the SBSA for the assessment of maladaptive social-evaluative beliefs.

Bridging maladaptive social self-beliefs and social anxiety: a network perspective

The Clark and Wells (1995) model of social anxiety disorder postulates that three types of maladaptive social self-beliefs (high standard, conditional, and unconditional beliefs) play a crucial role in the development of fear and avoidance of social-evaluative situations—i.e., the hallmark symptoms of social anxiety disorder. In this project, we examined associations between the three types of maladaptive social self-beliefs and fear and avoidance of social-evaluative situations in a nonclinical community sample (n = 389). We used network analysis to estimate functional relations among aspects of maladaptive self-beliefs, fear, and avoidance and computed two different network models, a graphical Gaussian model (GGM) and a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Each model estimates edges and the importance of nodes in different ways. Both GGM and DAG pointed to fear and conditional beliefs as especially potent bridges between maladaptive social self-beliefs and social anxiety in our nonclinical sample. Altogether, these results offer data-driven heuristics in the field’s larger, ongoing effort to illuminate pathways at play in the development of social anxiety. We situate this study within novel network approaches for developing theory-driven models and tests of the instigation and interactions of maladaptive social self-beliefs and social anxiety. However, because this is the first study to combine GGM and DAG in social anxiety research, we also discussed the caveats to this approach to help to usher the field forward.

The Relationship Between Negative Self-imagery and Social Anxiety in a Clinically Diagnosed Sample

The current study aimed to investigate the content of negative self-imagery (NSI) in Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and to explore the relationship between NSI and other maintaining variables. Eighty-six individuals (83.7% female) with SAD completed self-report questionnaires and a semi-structured imagery interview. Thematic analysis was used to assess core themes from the interview transcripts. Mediation analyses were employed to explore the relationship between NSI and other variables of interest. Imagery characteristics supported extant findings, such that they appeared distorted, from an observer perspective, and inclusive of multiple sensory modalities. ‘Unconditional beliefs’ and ‘Conditional beliefs’ depicted overarching themes emerging from the data, outlining themes in NSI regarding self- and other-directed concepts. Mediation analyses demonstrated that imagery variables mediated the relationship between trait social anxiety and subsequent distress. Furthermore, socially-relevant beliefs mediated the relationship between trait social anxiety and NSI. These findings emphasise the clinical importance of targeting the meaning of social imagery and memories in SAD.

Testing potential psychological predictors of attitudes towards cultured meat

Cultured meat is an emerging food technology that has the potential to resolve many of the social, environmental and ethical issues surrounding traditional factory farming practices. Recently, research has begun to explore consumer attitudes to the product, revealing a number of barriers and demographic predictors. However, our understanding of the psychological mechanisms that underpin attitudes to cultured meat remains limited. In the current study, we draw on an attitude roots model (Hornsey & Fielding, 2017) to explore a range of psychological mechanisms that may underpin attitudes to cultured meat. In terms of negative attitudes and intentions toward cultured meat, the most powerful predictors were food neophobia, political conservatism, and distrust of food scientists. When it comes to absolute opposition to cultured meat - defined by the unconditional belief that it should never be allowed under any circumstances - the strongest predictors were food and hygiene disgust sensitivity subscales, food neophobia, and conspiratorial ideation. A number of presumed mechanisms held no relationships to cultured meat attitudes, including social dominance orientation, speciesism, and naturalness bias. The null results on naturalness bias are of particular interest given recent research identifying concerns about naturalness as a key barrier to consumer acceptance. These results demonstrate the need for a more nuanced understanding of the psychological mechanisms that contribute to cultured meat attitudes and engagement.

S75. MALADAPTIVE SOCIAL-EVALUATIVE AND SELF-BELIEFS INFORMING THE RELATION BETWEEN PARANOIA AND SOCIAL ANXIETY

BackgroundParanoid delusions are reported among those with positive symptoms of schizophrenia (Bentall et al., 2009), those at high-risk for the development of psychosis (Addington et al., 2015; Salokangas et al., 2016), and in the general population (i.e., Freeman et al., 2005). Paranoia is related to functional impairment in multiple domains (i.e. Pinkham et al., 2016; McGurk et al., 2013). Given the presence of paranoia at both clinical and non-clinical levels, paranoia may be best conceptualized dimensionally. Further, robust relations between paranoia and social anxiety suggest that the two may exist together on one spectrum, with paranoia reflecting the most extreme end of this continuum (i.e. Gilbert, Boxall, Cheung, & Irons, 2005; Lim, Rodebaugh, Zyphur & Gleeson, 2016).Evidence suggests that several factors may influence the development of paranoia, including social cognitive biases such as diminished trust, increased hostility, and increased tendency to blame others (Pinkham et al., 2014). These types of social cognitive biases do not seem to be unique to paranoia and are also observed among those with social anxiety (i.e., Green & Phillips, 2004). Additional research suggests that paranoia and social anxiety may share other relevant attributes, such as need for approval from others (Rector, 2004), desire for closeness (Lim, Rodebaugh, Zyphur & Gleeson, 2016), and worry about and expectation of social rejection (Freeman, 2014). Despite literature to support overlap between paranoia and social anxiety, there is less research examining whether core beliefs of social anxiety contribute to the development and maintenance of paranoia. Specifically, core beliefs of social anxiety include (1) conditional beliefs: negative self-appraisals dependent on performance (2) unconditional beliefs: negative self-appraisals independent of behavior, and (3) high-standard beliefs: the attribution of self-worth based on performance (Wong, Moulds & Rapee, 2014). There is a need for research to determine the association between paranoia and beliefs related to social anxiety.The aim of the current study is to identify whether cognitions thought to be central to social anxiety are also related to paranoia in a sample of those with psychosis. We hypothesize that (1) social anxiety and paranoia will be related, and (2) heightened maladaptive self-beliefs of social anxiety will be associated with increased paranoia.MethodsWe will use the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (Heimberg, Mueller, Holt, Hope & Liebowitz, 1992) to measure social anxiety symptomatology. We will use the Self-Beliefs Related to Social Anxiety Scale (Wong, Moulds & Rapee, 2014) including three subscales: conditional beliefs, unconditional beliefs, and high standard beliefs, to quantify cognitions of social anxiety. To measure paranoia, we will use the Green Paranoid Thoughts Scale (Green et al., 2008).ResultsPreliminary analyses (N = 14) indicate that the social anxiety is robustly related to paranoia (r = 0.59, p < 0.05). Unconditional beliefs were related to paranoid thoughts (r = 0.62, p < 0.05) and paranoia was moderately correlated to conditional beliefs (r = 0.35, p = 0.24) and total self-beliefs related to social anxiety scores (r = 0.39, p = 0.19), but these relations were not statistically significant. Additional data will be available at the time of presentation.DiscussionResults of this research will both inform the development of paranoia and allow for a better understanding of the relation between paranoia and social anxiety. Specifically, cognitive mechanisms underlying their relation will be illuminated.

“God is the giver and taker of life”: Muslim beliefs and attitudes regarding assisted suicide and euthanasia

ABSTRACTIn the context of the Belgian debates on end-of-life care, the views of Muslims remain understudied. The aim of this article is twofold. First, we seek to document the relation between contemporary normative Muslim ideas on assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia on the one hand and real-world views and attitudes of Muslims living in Belgium on the other hand. Second, we aim to identify whether a shift is observable in the views and attitudes regarding active termination of life between first- and second-generation Muslims. We have observed that when dealing with these bioethical issues, both first- and second-generation Muslims adopt a theological line of reasoning similar to the one that can be found in normative Islamic views. We have found an absolute rejection of every act that deliberately terminates life, based upon the unconditional belief in an afterlife and in God's sovereign power over life and death.

Between quality of life and hope. Attitudes and beliefs of Muslim women toward withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments.

The technological advances in medicine, including prolongation of life, have constituted several dilemmas at the end of life. In the context of the Belgian debates on end-of-life care, the views of Muslim women remain understudied. The aim of this article is fourfold. First, we seek to describe the beliefs and attitudes of middle-aged and elderly Moroccan Muslim women toward withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments. Second, we aim to identify whether differences are observable among middle-aged and elderly women's attitudes toward withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments. Third, we aim to explore the role of religion in their attitudes. Fourth, we seek to document how our results are related to normative Islamic literature. Qualitative empirical research was conducted with a sample of middle-aged and elderly Moroccan Muslim women (n = 30) living in Antwerp (Belgium) and with experts in the field (n = 15). We found an unconditional belief in God's sovereign power over the domain of life and death (cf. determined lifespan by God) and in God's almightiness (cf. belief in a miracle). However, we also found a tolerant attitude, mainly among our middle-aged participants, toward withholding and withdrawing (treatment) based on theological, eschatological, financial and quality of life arguments. Our study reveals that religious beliefs and worldviews have a great impact on the ethical attitudes toward end-of-life issues. We found divergent positions toward withholding and withdrawing life-sustaining treatments, reflecting the lines of reasoning found in normative Islamic literature. In our interviews, theological and eschatological notions emerged as well as financial and quality of life arguments.

Social cognition and metacognition in social anxiety: A systematic review.

Cognitive-behavioural and metacognitive approaches to emotional disorder implicate beliefs in social anxiety, but the types of beliefs differ across these perspectives. Cognitive models suggest that social beliefs about the self (i.e., high standards and conditional and unconditional beliefs) are central. In contrast, the metacognitive model gives centre stage to metacognitive beliefs (i.e., positive and negative beliefs about thinking) as main contributors to the maintenance of the disorder. Despite an expanding research interest in this area, the evidence for such contributions has not yet been reviewed. This study set out to systematically review relevant cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental investigations of the direct and indirect (through cognitive processes, such as anticipatory processing, self-focused attention, the post-mortem, and avoidance) relationships of social and metacognitive beliefs with social anxiety. Clinical and nonclinical samples were included, and correlation and regression coefficients as well as results from group comparisons (e.g., t tests and analyses of variance) were extracted. Overall, 23 papers were located, through PsycINFO, PubMed, and Web of Science, and reviewed using narrative synthesis. The results showed a robust positive relationship between social beliefs and social anxiety that appeared to be mediated by cognitive processes. Specific metacognitive beliefs were found to positively contribute to social anxiety both directly and indirectly, through cognitive processes. The study's findings are limited to 2 models of social anxiety and other minor limitations (e.g., grey literature was excluded). With these accounted for, the results are discussed in terms of the conceptualization and treatment of social anxiety and suggestions for future research are made.

Translation and Initial Validation of the Japanese Version of the Self-Beliefs Related to Social Anxiety Scale.

Cognitive models of social anxiety posit that there are several types of maladaptive beliefs responsible for persistent social anxiety. Although these beliefs are theoretically important, currently there is no validated measure of these beliefs in Japan. In the present study, we translated into Japanese a well-validated measure of these beliefs, the Self-Beliefs Related to Social Anxiety (SBSA) Scale. The psychometric properties of the scale were also examined in two nonclinical samples ( ns = 401 and 30). Using confirmatory factor analysis, the Japanese version of the SBSA was found to have a correlated three-factor structure that consisted of "conditional beliefs," "unconditional beliefs," and "high standard beliefs." In addition, the Japanese version of the SBSA and its subscales demonstrated good internal consistency reliability and test-retest reliability. The Japanese version of the SBSA also demonstrated good convergent and divergent validity. Future applications of the Japanese version of the SBSA are discussed.

A Comparison of Repetitive Negative Thinking and Post-Event Processing in the Prediction of Maladaptive Social-Evaluative Beliefs: A Short-Term Prospective Study

Theoretical models propose that transdiagnostic and disorder-specific repetitive thinking processes each interact with individual environmental conditions to predict symptoms. The current study aimed to test this hypothesis in the context of social anxiety. Specifically, we aimed to predict future maladaptive social-evaluative beliefs (high standard, conditional, and unconditional beliefs) from: (a) the transdiagnostic tendency to engage in repetitive negative thinking (RNT), (b) the social anxiety-specific tendency to engage in post-event processing (PEP), and (c) the interaction of these repetitive thinking tendencies with the frequency of recent negative social events and social anxiety levels. An initial undergraduate sample (N = 331) was recruited and 215 participants completed measures of the constructs of interest at two time points within an acceptable timeframe (average 8.44 days apart). Using hierarchical linear modelling, significant interactions were only obtained for conditional and unconditional beliefs with a specific component of PEP that focuses on thinking about the past involved in prediction. Follow-up simple slopes analyses indicated mainly no change in these beliefs or decreasing trajectories over time for different combinations of levels on the predictor variables. However, for participants with high social anxiety levels who experienced a high number of recent negative social events, those who reported low levels of thinking about the past exhibited a pattern of increasing trajectories for conditional and unconditional beliefs. These findings indicate that RNT and PEP differ in their ability to predict social-evaluative beliefs, and highlight the importance of research comparing different types of repetitive thinking to better understand these processes.

Probing the structural validity of the Self-Beliefs in Social Anxiety Scale (SBSA): Adaptation and validation in a French-speaking community sample.

Clark and Wells’ (1995) model of social phobia proposes that there are 3 types of maladaptive self-beliefs responsible for social anxiety (high standard, conditional, and unconditional beliefs). Wong and Moulds (2009) recently developed the 15-item Self-Beliefs Social Anxiety (SBSA) scale that measures the strength of the self-belief types proposed by this model. They tested the structural validity of the SBSA and found that a correlated 3-factor model best fitted the data. However, they conducted their analyses on an undergraduate sample restricted in terms of age range and educational levels. Additionally, no previous study has tested whether this 3-factor solution is replicable. Moreover, no cross-cultural adaptation of the scale has been conducted. The present study was designed to address these issues. We tested whether the SBSA best fit with a 3-factor solution among a French-speaking community sample (N = 611). Confirmatory factor analyses replicated the model implied by Wong and Moulds (2011a), and, more generally, the theoretical model of Clark and Wells (1995). Moreover, good scale reliability and concurrent validity were observed.

Conditional belief types

We study type spaces where a player's type at a state is a conditional probability on the space. We axiomatize these spaces using conditional belief operators, examining three additional axioms of increasing strength. First, introspection, which requires the agent to be unconditionally certain of her beliefs. Second, echo, according to which the unconditional beliefs implied by the condition must be held given the condition. Third, determination, which says that the conditional beliefs are the unconditional beliefs that are conditionally certain. Echo implies that conditioning on an event is the same as conditioning on the event being certain, which formalizes the standard informal interpretation of conditional probability. The game-theoretic application of our model, discussed within an example, sheds light on a number of issues in the analysis of extensive form games. Type spaces are closely related to the sphere models of counterfactual conditionals and to models of hypothetical knowledge.

Self-Focused Attention and Post-Event Processing: Relevance to Social Performance Anxiety and Social Interaction Anxiety.

This study examined the roles of self-focused attention and post-event processing in social performance anxiety and social interaction anxiety. College students (N = 101) completed measures of social performance anxiety, social interaction anxiety, self-focused attention, post-event processing, and beliefs related to social anxiety. Interoceptive self-focused attention and post-event processing predicted social performance anxiety after controlling for social interaction anxiety. The associations with social interaction anxiety were not significant after controlling for social performance anxiety. Associations of behavioral self-focused attention with social performance anxiety and social interaction anxiety were not significant after controlling for interoceptive self-focused attention. No evidence of an interaction between self-focused attention and post-event processing in the prediction of social anxiety was found. This study found no evidence that the associations of interoceptive self-focused attention and post-event processing with social performance anxiety were statistically mediated by high standards, conditional beliefs about self, and unconditional beliefs about self. These results and their theoretical implications are discussed.

A Ranking‐Theoretic Approach to Conditionals

Conditionals somehow express conditional beliefs. However, conditional belief is a bi-propositional attitude that is generally not truth-evaluable, in contrast to unconditional belief. Therefore, this article opts for an expressivistic semantics for conditionals, grounds this semantics in the arguably most adequate account of conditional belief, that is, ranking theory, and dismisses probability theory for that purpose, because probabilities cannot represent belief. Various expressive options are then explained in terms of ranking theory, with the intention to set out a general interpretive scheme that is able to account for the most variegated usage of conditionals. The Ramsey test is only the first option. Relevance is another, familiar, but little understood item, which comes in several versions. This article adds a further family of expressive options, which is able to subsume also counterfactuals and causal conditionals, and indicates at the end how this family allows for partial recovery of truth conditions for conditionals.

Maladaptive Social Self-Beliefs in Alcohol-Dependence: A Specific Bias towards Excessive High Standards

BackgroundEmotional and interpersonal impairments associated with alcohol-dependence have been recently explored, but the distorted cognitive representations underlying these deficits remain poorly understood. The present study aims at exploring the presence of maladaptive social self-beliefs among alcohol-dependent individuals, as these biased self-beliefs have been recently shown to play a crucial role in the development and maintenance of other psychopathological states (social anxiety and depression).Methodology/Principal findingsTwenty-five recently detoxified alcohol-dependent participants and 25 matched controls filled in self-report questionnaires evaluating maladaptive social self-beliefs, interpersonal problems and several comorbid states (anxiety, social anxiety, depression). As compared to controls, alcohol-dependent individuals showed higher scores than controls for the three subcategories of maladaptive social self-beliefs (high standards, conditional beliefs and unconditional beliefs). Our key finding was that when comorbidities were controlled for, alcohol-dependence was associated with a specific bias towards exaggerated high standards in social contexts. Moreover, these high standards beliefs were strongly correlated with interpersonal problems.Conclusions/SignificanceThese results provide the first insights into the influence of cognitive biases on interpersonal problems in addictive states, and suggest that maladaptive self-beliefs could have a central influence on the development and maintenance of alcohol-dependence.