Treating social anxiety reduces tendency to see others as hostile, study finds
Feb 22nd 2026
Two studies in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy link social anxiety to hostile interpretation bias and show that a 28-day program to drop safety behaviors lowered both anxiety and hostile interpretations.
- Higher social anxiety is associated with a greater tendency to interpret ambiguous social cues as hostile.
- Study 1 (120 undergraduates, 68 at one month) found social anxiety linked to hostile interpretations at both time points, but anxiety did not predict change in bias over one month.
- Study 2 randomized 69 high-anxiety students to a 28-day safety behavior reduction or waitlist and found the active group had bigger drops in social anxiety and hostile interpretations.
- The reduction in hostile interpretations was fully explained by the decrease in social anxiety.
- Limitations include homogeneous college samples, unclear rates of formal diagnosis, a waitlist rather than active control, and no direct measures of anger.
- Clinical implication: reducing social anxiety could change how people perceive others and potentially lower anger-related problems.