Just tell me it’s going to be OK! Fear of negative evaluation may be more important than fear of positive evaluation in predicting excessive reassurance seeking.

Excessive reassurance seeking (ERS) is a transdiagnostic maladaptive emotion regulation strategy wherein people excessively ask others for reassurance to reduce their anxiety. Evidence from one study suggests that fear of negative evaluation (FNE)—related to both social anxiety and depression—contributes to ERS. Research also highlights fear of positive evaluation (FPE) as characteristic of social anxiety, which is distinct from but related to FNE. No research to date has examined how FPE relates to ERS, despite theoretical tenets suggesting FNE and FPE may have opposite effects on ERS. We conducted 2 studies investigating how individual differences in FNE and FPE interact to predict depressive and general/evaluative threat-related reassurance seeking. We conducted online surveys with undergraduate student samples and performed moderation analyses, controlling for depressive and social anxiety symptoms. For Study 2, participants completed questionnaires in an imagined social-evaluative context. Results suggested that FNE predicts ERS, regardless of depressive or social anxiety symptoms. However, FPE appears less important when people are fearful of negative evaluation. Moreover, the context in which people seek reassurance impacted which type of evaluation fear was most important. FNE may be more important than FPE in maintaining mood and anxiety symptoms via its impact on ERS and its transient anxiety-reducing effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights r...
Source: Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research