Anxious but Thoroughly Informed? No Jumping-to-Conclusions Bias in Social Anxiety Disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is maintained by biased information processing, which might involve hasty decision making. This study tested whether SAD is associated with jumping-to-conclusions in neutral and socially threatening situations. Sixty participants with SAD and 56 healthy controls completed a beads-task and a Social Beads-Task (SBT) with neutral, threat-relevant, and self-relevant situations. Dependent variables were draws to decision (DTD) and certainty about the decision. In the beads-task, participants with SAD showed more DTD than controls. In the SBT, all participants drew fewer beads in threat- and self-relevant situations than in neutral scenarios. Participants with SAD reported higher certainty regarding their decision in the beads-task and in the threat- and self-relevant scenarios of the SBT. Jumping-to-conclusions increases when decision making is framed in a threatening or social-evaluative context. SAD may be linked to more certainty about decisions, but findings on group differences require further investigation.