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Does Rumination Predict the Strength of Maladaptive Self-Beliefs Characteristic of Social Anxiety Over Time?

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Abstract

Two important components of the Clark and Wells (in Social phobia: diagnosis, assessment, and treatment. Guilford, New York, pp 69–93, 1995) model of social phobia are ruminative processing and maladaptive self-beliefs (high standard, conditional and unconditional beliefs). In a longitudinal design, we hypothesised that rumination at Time 1 would be positively associated with the strength of each of the belief types at Time 2 (while controlling for depression, general anxiety, social anxiety and strength of belief types at Time 1). For our sample of undergraduates (N = 180), the average time between Time 1 and Time 2 was 8.84 days. Contrary to predictions, rumination at Time 1 was not uniquely related to the high standard beliefs at Time 2. Consistent with predictions, higher levels of rumination at Time 1 uniquely predicted stronger conditional and unconditional beliefs at Time 2. These results highlight the link between ruminative processing and specific maladaptive self-beliefs, and suggest that treatments of social phobia need to explicitly target rumination.

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Notes

  1. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to see whether there were any differences on Time 1 measures (FNE, SPS, SIAS, DASS, SBSA, RTQ) between the group of participants that were included in the final sample (i.e., completed Time 1 and Time 2 measures) and the group of participants that were excluded from the final sample (i.e., only completed Time 1 measures). There were no differences between these two groups on Time 1 measures (all ps > .05), suggesting that the excluded group did not differ from the final sample of participants. Hence, the exclusion of participants that did not complete the Time 2 measure is unlikely to have biased the final sample.

  2. In the sample, 117 participants had 1 week between administrations of the SBSA, 56 participants had between 1 and 3 weeks between administrations of the SBSA, and seven participants had between 3 and 4 weeks between administrations of the SBSA. Difference scores (Time 2 minus Time 1) were computed for each of the maladaptive self-belief types. There were no significant differences between these three groups in terms of change in high standard beliefs, conditional beliefs and unconditional beliefs from Time 1 to Time 2 (all ps > .05). In addition, there were no differences between these groups on Time 1 variables (all ps > .05). Hence, it appears appropriate to combine all these participants into one group (N = 180) for analyses, despite varying lengths of time between SBSA administrations.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award to Quincy J. J. Wong, and received some additional support from a grant from the Australian Research Council (DP0666929) awarded to Michelle Moulds and Lisa Zadro. We would like to thank Helen Tang, Leigh Mellish and Emma Fabiansson for their assistance with the recruitment of participants. We would also like to thank Peter McEvoy and Alison Mahoney for giving us the opportunity to use the RTQ. Finally, we thank Sarah Certoma for helpful comments on this paper.

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  1. School of Psychology, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia

    Quincy J. J. Wong & Michelle L. Moulds

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  1. Quincy J. J. Wong
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  2. Michelle L. Moulds
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Correspondence to Michelle L. Moulds.

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Wong, Q.J.J., Moulds, M.L. Does Rumination Predict the Strength of Maladaptive Self-Beliefs Characteristic of Social Anxiety Over Time?. Cogn Ther Res 36, 94–102 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-010-9316-0

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