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Background:Social feedback in the virtual environment is a critical part of successful virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET), and identifying the influences of virtual social feedback on social anxiety patients is necessary.Aims:The present study aimed to explore the influences of ambiguous and negative virtual social feedback on social anxiety patients and a health control group (HCG).Method:Twenty-six social anxiety patients and 26 healthy participants were recruited. All participants were exposed to a virtual public speaking scenario. The participants were required to make two 3-minute speeches while the virtual audiences gave them either ambiguous feedback or negative feedback. The subjective units of discomfort (SUD) and heart rate were collected during the process.Results:The results showed that SAD individuals reported higher levels of subjective anxiety than those in the HCG, and the between-group differences were larger in the mild ambiguous condition than in the intense negative condition.Conclusions:This study indicates that social anxiety patients have an interpretation bias towards ambiguous virtual social feedback. Therefore, it is important for VR-based interventions to take into account not only the valence of the feedback but also the ambiguity aspect.
Previous studies have shown that anger rumination plays a critical role in increasing anger. The present study examined whether these effects were different with respect to different foci of anger. In Study 1, 96 participants were asked to ruminate about their shame‐related or shame‐unrelated anger experiences either in an analytical or an experiential way after recalling an autobiographical anger memory. In Study 2, either shame‐related or shame‐unrelated anger was evoked in participants (n = 176) by an accomplice, and then the participants were instructed to ruminate in one of the following ways: self‐distanced analytical, self‐distanced experiential, self‐immersed analytical, and self‐immersed experiential rumination. Study 1 showed significant interaction effects between the foci of anger and the mode of processing. Study 2 showed significant three‐way interaction effects among the foci of anger, the mode of processing and the vantage perspective of rumination. Specifically, the results indicated that self‐immersed analytical rumination was more useful than the other types of rumination in reducing shame‐unrelated anger, while no difference was found regarding shame‐related anger. These findings indicated that the effects of anger rumination are different regarding the foci of anger.
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