2 - (SYM 72) the Role of Fears of Receiving Compassion in Socially Anxious Individuals' Immediate Emotional Responses to Compassionate Displays from Others

Background: Emerging research shows that social anxiety (SA) is correlated with fears of receiving compassion (FRC) from others. Thus, people with high SA may be motivated to keep others at a distance to avoid schema-incongruent feelings of warmth and kindness; however, little is known about their immediate emotional responses to receiving compassion.



Method: 257 undergraduates from a diverse range of backgrounds representative of the study region (see osf.io/d2jk8) completed measures of trait SA and FRC. Then, they read a series of vignettes where they imagined committing a social blunder and receiving either explicitly compassionate feedback characterized by acknowledgement of the blunder with a supportive statement, or prosocial feedback that had a generally positive tone but did not convey compassion or directly address the blunder. After each vignette, participants rated their emotional responses to the feedback, including positive responses of relief, comfort, and reassurance, as well as negative responses of fear, embarrassment, and self-criticism.



Results: Linear mixed effects models revealed that contrary to pre-registered hypotheses (osf.io/cwmh6), neither trait SA nor FRC predicted negative responses in either feedback condition. However, positive emotional responses were uniquely predicted by both condition (β = .12, 95% CI = .07 - .16, p < .001) and trait FRC (β = .37, 95% CI = .28 - .45, p < .001). Specifically, participants reported feeling more reassured, comforted, and relieved when they received compassionate (relative to prosocial) feedback and when they had higher levels of trait FRC.



Discussion: Our findings show that even people high in FRC can experience compassion as reassuring after an embarrassing social blunder, regardless of their levels of trait SA. Compassion from others can activate grief linked to wanting but not having received care when needed in the past; thus, those high in FRC may be most in need of compassion, perhaps explaining their immediate emotional responses of comfort upon receiving compassionate feedback. Research on counterfactual thinking may also explain why individuals experienced relief as positive after a blunder expected to elicit judgment. We will discuss the potential for integrating compassion into novel therapeutic approaches that promote new learning to support schema change and enhance positivity and well-being in social anxiety disorder. Considerations and research on how expressions and interpretations of compassion differ across cultural contexts will also be discussed.