Memory bias and personality characteristics in college students with social anxiety disorder

Abstract Introduction Some individuals are more susceptible to recalling false information about events that never happened in their life. Nevertheless, there are several factors, such as personality characteristics, that appear to be related to memory performance. Social anxiety also provokes memory deficits for events that happen to other people, because these individuals tend to focus on their own inner selves rather than on external signs. Objective To investigate the influence of the personality characteristics of individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) on memory performance. Methods In this study, 183 university students had their memory tested using a complex emotional story about a mother and her son. Only subjects without clinical symptoms of depression and general anxiety (N = 148; 61 with SAD) were included in the study. Participants were compared for differences in personality characteristics using the Factorial Inventory of Personality and for SAD using the Social Phobia Inventory. Results The main results showed that memory performance of individuals with low percentile ranks in the personality characteristic dominance, i.e., those with low self-esteem, remembered more true information about the story than those with high scores when they did not have SAD. Conclusion The results are helpful to foster better understanding of the personality characteristics related to SAD, such as low dominance, which implies low self-esteem and difficulties with trust and with imposing themselves on others. The results could help development and improvement of techniques for therapeutic intervention.


Introduction
Human memory is influenced by several factors, such as prior knowledge, current mental state, and emotions. 1-3 A large part of these differences occur because of individual dissimilarities, particularly in intelligence and personality characteristics. 4,5 Some individuals seem to be more susceptible to variations affecting memory performance, especially with regard to distortions such as recalling false memories. 1 Susceptibility to forming false memories (recalling events that never occurred, or that occurred in a different way from how they were retrieved) may result in serious consequences, directly affecting individuals' lives. For example, misremembering what happened to other people during an accident (e.g., how severely injured they were, what part of the body was injured) due to focusing on inner wounds or flashbacks from memories of traumatic accidents.
The fact that some individuals are more prone than others to recall false information about events that never happened in their life prompts us to question what we know regarding the role individual differences play. 3,4 Current research has failed to reach a consensus on which types of individuals are more susceptible or resistant to false memories (e.g., those with high levels of conscientiousness, neuroticism, perfectionism, etc.). 4 Some researchers claim that certain personality characteristics lead to a tendency to memory failures 6 and others suggest that it is difficult to detect which individual differences are related to increased false memories. 7 According to Payne et al., 8 individuals with high stress levels were more likely to remember false information. However, Beato et al. 7 found that acute stress was not related to false memory susceptibility.
Nevertheless, according to the cognitive model, an event and more likely to produce false memories. 9,10 People with anxiety disorders produce unique results regarding memory performance. Socially anxious individuals tend to examine their own inner selves, finding it difficult to devote their attention to external signs, generating memory deficits. 11 Liang et al. 12 showed that individuals with social anxiety forgot words with a positive emotional content more easily than healthy individuals. Along the same lines, Toffalini et al. 13 showed an increase in false memory creation for negative events (but not for positive ones), in individuals with high levels of anxiety, even when controlling for other disorders (e.g., depression).
However, this is not always the case, and some researchers suggest that anxiety in and of itself does not affect memory. 1,3 Neufeld et al. 14 have addressed this issue, suggesting that personality characteristics along with psychological disorders (i.e., anxiety) were related to memory distortion. They tested the memory performance of 200 university students to study possible effects of personality characteristics on mnemonic distortion of word lists. The results showed that social desirability was one of the predictors of memory performance in this population, a notable characteristic in individuals with social anxiety, which has a prevalence of 6.8% in the adult population. 15 In this study, we evaluated differences in memory performance between individuals with and without social anxiety disorder (SAD) with different personality characteristics.
Although several studies have investigated these factors' independent associations with memory, 4-7 few have combined memory for complex memory performance, individual differences, and SAD. However, these studies (e.g., Neufeld et al. 14 ) did not test memories of complex emotional events.
According to the APA, 16 SAD is characterized by an intense fear of social situations or situations in which one's achievement may be negatively evaluated and subjected to criticism, fostering hypersensitivity to criticism or even to negative assessments from others, and involving low self-esteem. The fear of negative evaluation may also result in avoidance and safety behaviors, causing criticism to go unanswered 17 and lack of positivity and negative cognitions have been associated with fear and avoidance in social anxiety disorder. 18 One of the factors that may contribute to this phenomenon is the social cost involved in the act of disagreeing, which is correlated to the fear of negative evaluation and possible social isolation. 19 Lifetime prevalence of all anxiety disorders in Brazil was estimated to be around 10-28% and the prevalence rate was about 27.5% for the age group from 18 to 34 years old, 20 which is consistent with the college-aged participants in the present study.
Taking the literature into consideration and based on the concept of automatic thoughts that lead to cognitive errors described in the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy model, 21 our hypothesis is that individuals whose thoughts are highly independent and rigid and who interpret social relationships more as a source There were 87 participants without SAD, 59% of whom were female. From these, 55 were randomly assigned to watch the arousal version of the story (mean age We conducted a memory test 38

Results
Overall effects of memory performance were This confirms appropriate recognition rates for true and false memory for the type of materials used -for comparison, see Neufeld et al. 14 and Palma et al. 40 Rates of non-mnemonic responses (or guesses) were very low, suggesting that participants were paying attention to the task.

Memory differences due to social desirability
The effect of trying to please the researcher was   Participants with low levels of this characteristic were more likely to produce more false memories for phase 3 than 1 (p < 0.001) and those with high levels of the characteristic affiliation showed greater production of false memories for phase 1 than for phase 2 (p < 0.001).
Overall, participants with both low and high affiliation were more likely to produce false information for phase 3 than phase 2 (ps < 0.001). These results suggest that independent participants (i.e., low affiliation) were susceptible to mnemonic distortions to story information after the crucial phase of the story (i.e., phase 2 in which the negative content was included).
Participants who were dependent on the group (i.e., high affiliation), however, seemed to produce the same level of false memories from both neutral phases (i.e.,

Interaction between personality characteristics, social anxiety, and memory performance
To investigate the interaction between SAD and personality characteristics, a 2x2x3 ANOVA was conducted for each personality characteristic at its two extremes for both story versions, by type of information recovered ( Table 2). Only the results of the personality characteristics that showed an interaction are presented.
The analyses show significant interactions between SAD and the personality characteristic dominance [F(2,46) = 3.01, p < 0.05, = 0.116] for true and false memory performance. In this case, individuals without SAD were more likely to retrieve true information than those with SAD (p < 0.05) when they were low in dominance (i.e., had higher feelings of insecurity, low self-esteem).
Individuals low in dominance have difficulty imposing themselves in groups and controlling their environment.
Overall, those without SAD remembered more true information if they were in the low percentile rank of the personality characteristic dominance compared to those in the high percentile (p < 0.05). Moreover, those with SAD showed a tendency to produce more false memories than those without SAD (p < 0.05) when they show feelings of confidence and have a desire to control others (i.e., have high dominance).

Discussion
The main goal of the study was to investigate the influence of personality characteristics (and to ascertain which characteristics play a role) on the susceptibility to memory distortions of individuals with and without SAD. Overall, results show that individuals with SAD and specific personality characteristic were susceptible to mnemonic challenges. These findings contribute to the understanding of how personality characteristics and psychological symptoms, such as SAD, affect memory performance. The results are discussed in order in which they were presented.
It was shown that the characteristic autonomy showed a significant interaction with true memories. production of false memories for the characteristic affiliation was higher in phase 3, that is, in the last phase, immediately after the emotional content and arousal information were presented. Participants with low affiliation are more independent and less sensitive to the bonds in the story, which explains how they were more susceptible to interference after the critical phase, suggesting they were disturbed by the storyline and produced more false memories after the fact. Those with high affiliation were equally likely to produce false memories for both neutral phases of the story, but not for the critical phase. The literature has reported a protective effect of emotion on memory and suggested that emotional events were recalled in greater number. 12,14,18,23 The relationship between SAD and the FIP personality characteristics was also evaluated against memory performance. Participants without SAD presented a higher true memory index when associated with the characteristic dominance, having, however, low dominance scores. This characteristic is related to an expression of feelings of self-confidence and to the desire to control others. Notwithstanding, participants who recalled more true information presented low dominance. Although the analysis of SAD and the personality characteristics measured by the FIP did not indicate a correlation between SAD and dominance, this characteristic seems to have an impact on recalling true memories, i.e., participants who do not desire to control their environment might be more attentive to the mnemonic task. In other words, individuals with SAD who also have difficulty in imposing themselves within the group and controlling their environment (i.e., low dominance), were impaired in recalling the facts when compared to those without SAD but with the same personality characteristics. These results suggest a clear distinction between a feeling of inadequacy regarding one's environment that is a classic sign of an individual with SAD and the presence of the disorder when it comes to the information of events recovered. 40,41 Thus, the results of this study are helpful to foster better understanding of the personality characteristics related to SAD and also provide evidence on how personality characteristics may impact the memory process of this population, which could help development and improvement of techniques for therapeutic intervention. Finally, we can clearly state that some personality characteristics impact mnemonic performance. However, studies with larger samples, assessed in different manners, not through self-report, will improve the generalizability of the results. Future studies should also consider ways to control SAD levels and use different instruments for measuring personality in order to consolidate the results.