The Relationship Between Hostile Interpretation Bias and Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety: a Replication Across
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The Relationship Between Hostile Interpretation Bias and Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety: a Replication Across Two Samples Cassandra Krug Marks 1
&
Jacob D. Kraft 1 & DeMond M. Grant 1 & Tony T. Wells 1
Accepted: 20 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Cognitive models of social anxiety and depression posit that hostile interpretation bias may be a symptom of, and act as a maintenance factor for, these disorders. Social anxiety and depression are also associated with increased experience of angry and irritable mood. To investigate whether hostile interpretation bias is related to symptoms of the disorder or to irritability, the current study investigated the degree to which state irritable mood may influence these relationships. In two samples, MTurk workers (Sample 1, n = 145) and college students (Sample 2, n = 387), we assessed depression symptoms, social anxiety symptoms, irritable mood, and hostile interpretation bias. In sample 1, depression and social anxiety symptoms were positively associated with hostile interpretation bias. When statistically controlling for irritable mood, depression symptoms no longer significantly predicted hostile interpretation bias. However, social anxiety remained a significant predictor of hostile interpretation bias even when controlling for irritable mood. The pattern of results was identical in sample 2. Results indicate that the association between depression symptoms and hostile interpretation bias may be accounted for by irritable mood, but social anxiety symptoms have a unique association with hostile interpretation bias even when including irritable mood. Clinical implications and future directions are discussed. Keywords Interpretation bias . Irritability . Depression symptoms . Social anxiety symptoms
Hostile Interpretation Bias and Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety Cognitive models (e.g., Beck 1976; Clark and Wells 1995; Rapee and Heimberg 1997) posit that emotional disorders have common cognitive biases that affect the onset and maintenance of the disorders. In particular, depression and social anxiety are associated with the tendency to interpret neutral or ambiguous information as negative or threatening (e.g., Ellard et al. 2010; Everaert et al. 2017a; Hirsch et al. 2006; Yoon and Zinbarg 2008). Most of this research tends to investigate disorder-specific biases, with a focus on a generally negative, self-relevant bias in depression (Everaert et al. 2017b) and a bias to interpret ambiguous social cues as critical or indicating disapproval in social anxiety (Huppert et al. 2003; Huppert et al. 2007). However, both depression and social anxiety may involve a hostile interpretation bias characterized by the * Cassandra Krug Marks [email protected] 1
Oklahoma State University, 116 North Murray Hall, Stillwater, OK 74074, USA
tendency to assign hostile intent to ambiguous sociallyrelevant scenarios. In accordance with the fear of being negatively evaluated by others, hostile inte
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