(PS2-92) Attributional Style Using Social Media Posts: Interrelations with Anxiety, Depression, Emotion Regulation, and Empathy

Abstract Text: Some mental health symptoms, like anxiety and depression, are associated with a tendency to overinterpret ambiguous and accidental situations as aggressive or hostile (i.e., attributional bias). This tendency can be amplified for those with poor emotion regulation or less empathy. Limited work has investigated attributional style in online interactions, despite greater ambiguity and risk of misperceptions online. Given this, better understanding of factors that contribute to attributional style in online interactions is needed. We created a modified version of the Ambiguous Intentions Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ) using social media vignettes to help fill this gap. Our preliminary work supports the validity of the modified AIHQ. The current study aims to explore relationships between the modified AIHQ and mental health symptoms, and to explore the role of emotion regulation and empathy in these relationships.

We modified the AIHQ to mimic Facebook posts from a “friend.” Negative social situations with accidental or ambiguous causes were reworded using first-person language from the friend’s perspective (e.g., “I was dancing at a club and someone bumped into me from behind”). Questions about anger, blame, and perceived intentionality were reworded to ask participants to indicate how they thought their friend would feel in the situation described. Scores on all items were averaged together for a total AIHQ score, where higher scores indicate greater hostile attribution bias. Participants (n = 132) completed the modified AIHQ and self-report measures of mental health symptoms, emotion regulation, and empathy online.

Higher modified AIHQ score was associated with greater depression (r = .26, p = .003), greater anxiety (r = .25, p = .003), and more difficulty with emotion regulation (r = .24, p = .005). Contrary to expectations, correlations between empathy (i.e., empathic concern, perspective taking) and the modified AIHQ were non-significant. Empathic concern significantly moderated the relationship between depression and AIHQ scores (R2 = .10, F(3,128)= 4.58, p=.004), such that for those with lower empathic concern, higher depression was associated with higher attribution bias, while this relationship was non-significant for those with higher empathic concern. However, empathic concern did not moderate the relationship between anxiety and AIHQ scores. Perspective taking and emotion regulation did not moderate relationships between AIHQ scores and depression and anxiety.

Hostile attribution bias on the modified AIHQ was related to higher anxiety and depression, and more difficulties in emotion regulation. While empathy was not correlated with attributional bias, it significantly moderated the relationship between attributional bias and depression, highlighting the importance of empathic concern in this relationship. Overall, results suggest that emotion regulation, symptoms of anxiety and depression, and components of empathy may be important for understanding interpretations of online interactions. Future work should continue to explore the validity of this modified measure, including in larger and more diverse samples. Investigations using this measure in clinical populations may also be informative.