Involuntary autobiographical memories and future projections in social anxiety

ABSTRACT

Intrusive involuntary memories and images are a cardinal phenomenon in a range of psychological disorders, but not systematically examined in social anxiety. We examined potential biases upon generating involuntary versus voluntary memories and future projections in individuals with high and low levels of social anxiety. Participants recorded involuntary and voluntary autobiographical events, and their associated emotional response in a structured mental time travel diary. High social anxiety was associated with more intense anxiety and embarrassment and greater use of a range of emotion regulation strategies upon generating all types of autobiographical events. Involuntary (versus voluntary) memories and future events were associated with a heightened emotional response independent of social anxiety, and memories were associated with more embarrassment than imagined future events. The effects of high versus low social anxiety and involuntary versus voluntary generation process were independent from each other. The findings have implications for affective and cognitive models of involuntary memories and future projections in emotional disorders.

KEYWORDS:

• Social anxiety
• autobiographical memory
• future events
• emotion regulation
• spontaneous cognition
• involuntary retrieval

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Nina Staugaard, Anne Sofie Jakobsen, and Astrid Riis Hundahl for their assistance in data collection and data entry.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data are available from the first author upon request.

ORCID

Adriana del Palacio-Gonzalez http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6523-4639

Additional information

Funding

Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF) Danmarks Grundforskningsfond – Grant DNRF89 for conducting this study. The DNRF had no involvement in the design or the interpretation of the results of the current study