Effects of Social Anxiety on Visual Perspectives in Memory and Episodic Future Thought

This study explored the effects of social anxiety on the visual perspectives used in episodic memory and episodic future thought. Previous research has found that social anxiety is related to greater use of the observer (third-person) perspective relative to the field (first-person) perspective when visualizing memories of social situations (Wells, Clark, & Ahmad, 1998) and that the observer perspective is used more often in episodic future thought than in episodic memory (McDermott, Woodbridge, Rice, Berg, & Szpunar, 2015). The present study sought to replicate these findings and extend them by determining if social anxiety increased use of the observer perspective in episodic future thought about social situations. Participants completed a survey online which included the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS), visualizing social memories and potential future social situations, and rating visual perspectives taken in those visualizations as either an observer or field perspective. Social anxiety was not found to have any impact on the visual perspective ratings of either social memories or imagined future social situations. There were also no significant differences found between participants\u27 visual perspective ratings of episodic memories and episodic future thoughts. Participants\u27 own visual perspective ratings for past and future social situations were found to be correlated