1 - (SYM 34) The Role of Daily Self-doubt, Post-event Processing, and Reassurance Quality on Excessive Reassurance Urges for People with Social Anxiety

Excessive reassurance seeking (ERS) has been found to be an ineffective coping strategy that results in negative intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences in depression, OCD, and other anxiety disorders. However, research on social anxiety and ERS is limited. We conducted a recent correlational study showing that both self-doubt and post-event processing predicted reassurance seeking behaviours for those with impairing symptoms of social anxiety (Bui & Moscovitch, 2024). To build on these results, 200 Prolific participants from Canada, US, and UK (M_age = 35.5, 66% women, 31.5% men, 1% non-binary, 74.5% White/European, 7% Black/African, 3% South Asian) were recruited to complete a preregistered daily diaries study tracking social and interpersonal experiences for 14 days. We hypothesized that on days when participants report higher self-doubt and post-event processing, they will report greater reassurance seeking urges, and these effects will be magnified for those with higher trait social anxiety and for those receiving lower quality reassurance. Results from multilevel modeling analyses revealed that same-day main effects were significant, with higher trait social anxiety (β = 0.02, p < 0.01), daily self-doubt (β = 0.09, p < 0.05), post-event processing (β = 0.07, p < 0.01), and reassurance quality (β = 0.21, p < 0.01) each linked with higher reassurance seeking urges. Interestingly, receiving reassurance that was perceived as higher quality was associated with increases in urges, suggesting that receiving more satisfying or comforting reassurance may inadvertently reinforce urges, fueling a potential reliance on external validation. However, the extent to which high-quality reassurance impacted reassurance-seeking urges depended on levels of post-event processing and self-doubt, such that the link between higher quality reassurance and urges was amplified when post-event processing was high (β = 0.01, p < 0.01), but diminished when self-doubt was high (β = -0.14, p < 0.01). Future analyses will examine lagged effects to deepen our understanding of these effects and examine cause and effect relationships. Clinically, results emphasize the need for interventions that lower the urge to rely on external reassurance by reducing self-doubt and post-event processing to support adaptive independent coping during and after interpersonal encounters for those with social anxiety.