Absence of a positive bias in social anxiety: The application of a directed forgetting paradigm Chi-Wen Liang a , Wen-Yau Hsu a, b, * , Fu-Chien Hung c , Wei-Ting Wang a , Chao-Hsien Lin a a Department of Psychology, National Chengchi University, NO.64, Sec.2, ZhiNan Rd, Wenshan District, Taipei City 11605, Taiwan, ROC b Research Center for Mind, Brain, and Learning, National Chengchi University, Taiwan, ROC c Department of Psychology, Chung Yaun Christian University, Taiwan, ROC article info Article history: Received 28 December 2009 Received in revised form 27 September 2010 Accepted 6 December 2010 Keywords: Social anxiety Directed forgetting Memory bias abstract The present study used a directed forgetting paradigm to investigate whether socially anxious individ- uals show a memory bias for social information. Socially anxious and non-anxious participants viewed three types of words: socially negative, socially positive, and neutral. Each word was presented on a computer screen and was followed by a cue instructing participants to either remember or forget the word. A free recall test and a recognition test were then administered by asking participants to recall and recognize both “to-be-remembered” and “to-be-forgotten” words. When compared to non-anxious participants, socially anxious participants showed a greater directed forgetting effect for socially positive words in the free recall test, indicating that socially anxious individuals more easily forget socially positive words than do non-anxious individuals. This result suggests that socially anxious individuals lack the positive bias (i.e., difficulty in forgetting socially positive information) displayed by non-anxious individuals. Ó 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. 1. Introduction Cognitive theories have assumed that individuals with high social anxiety tend to process socially threatening stimuli more elaborately than neutral or non-socially threatening stimuli (Beck, Emery, & Greenberg, 1985). Based on this assumption, socially anxious individuals were hypothesized to remember socially threatening information better than other types of information, relative to non-anxious individuals. However, this hypothesis has been challenged by the controversial results of empirical studies (Ledley & Heimberg, 2006). Researchers frequently use explicit and implicit memory tasks to investigate memory bias in social anxiety. Although most studies have failed to find an explicit memory bias in social anxiety (Becker, Roth, Andrich, & Margraf, 1999; Cloitre, Cancienne, Heimberg, Holt, & Liebowitz, 1995; Rapee, McCallum, Melville, Ravenscroft, & Rodney, 1994), several have provided evidence to support the existence of implicit memory bias in social anxiety (Amir, Bower, Briks, & Freshman, 2003; Amir, Foa, & Coles, 2000). The inconsistency of these findings may be explained by the model proposed by Williams, Watts, MacLeod, and Mathews (1988). Williams et al. argue that highly anxious individuals tend to automatically direct their attention toward threatening stimuli in the early stages of information processing. In the later stages of information processing, however, Williams et al. predict that these individuals escape from threatening stimuli with a controlled strategy. Therefore, the explicit memory bias (reflecting a controlled process) is eliminated, while the implicit memory bias (reflecting an automatic process) is maintained. In addition to studying the phenomenon of remembering threatening information, researchers have focused considerable attention on the ability to forget threatening information in people with anxiety disorders. Several investigators have used a directed forgetting paradigm to explore the nature of memory deficits in anxiety disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (McNally, Metzger, Lasko, Clancy, & Pitman, 1998) and obsessi- veecompulsive disorder (Tolin, Hamlin, & Foa, 2002). A directed forgetting paradigm is generally used to examine the phenomenon of intentional forgetting. It has been hypothesized that intentional forgetting plays a role in psychopathology. Forgetting distressful events is beneficial in preventing emotional disturbances (Bjork, Bjork, & Anderson, 1998; De Prince & Freyd, 2004). At the same time, difficulty in forgetting negative memories may contribute to the persistence of depression and some anxiety disorders (Power, Dalgleish, Claudio, Tata, & Kentish, 2000; Tolin et al., 2002). * Corresponding author. National Chengchi University, Department of Psychology, NO.64, Sec.2, ZhiNan Rd, Wenshan District, Taipei City 11605, Taiwan, ROC. Tel.: þ886 2 29387379; fax: þ886 2 29366725. E-mail address: hsu@nccu.edu.tw (W.-Y. Hsu). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jbtep 0005-7916/$ e see front matter Ó 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2010.12.002 J. Behav. Ther. & Exp. Psychiat. 42 (2011) 204e210