The influence of social anxiety on interpersonal information processing in a military-life environment: A cross-sectional study

Although social anxiety as a ubiquitous emotion impacting people's social behaviors has aroused much researchers’ interest in exploring its cognitive behavioral model, no previous study has focused on soldiers with different social anxiety within the context of the specific military environment. To explore the associations between social anxiety and interpersonal information processing concerted on interpretation and judgment, the study may provide an intervention point for soldiers to ameliorate social anxiety and accommodate to the military-life environment. A self-reported questionnaire and 2 behavioral tasks were conducted in the cross-section study to explore the associations. Seventy-four soldiers were randomly recruited from a naval base. The Interpersonal Anxiety Scale was used to assess social anxiety of soldiers. Two behavioral tasks were designed to test the characteristics of interpersonal information processing, one for interpretation bias and the other for judgment bias. This cross-sectional study showed social anxiety had a significant negative correlation with interpretation bias and abidance (as judgment bias), signaling that soldiers with higher levels of social anxiety had a stronger tendency to negative interpretation bias and showed lower abidance. The mediating effect analysis showed the interpretation bias could indirectly affect the soldier's abidance through social anxiety. Notably, none of the interaction effects of social anxiety and social information types were statistically significant; therefore, the level of social anxiety predetermined the abidance of soldiers. Soldiers’ social anxiety has an influence on processing military-life interpersonal information, and it plays a certain intermediary role in the associations between low abidance and negative interpretation bias. The stronger negative interpretation bias than positive bias of soldiers, the higher social anxiety they could show with the less possibility to abide, which might result in behaviors against the military collective requirements. Social anxiety has the primary effect on the abidance of soldiers; hence, in the future, the interpretation bias modification could be a plausible cognitive-behavior therapy to help soldiers ameliorate social anxiety, thus contributing to enhancing their sense of belonging to the troops and accommodation to military life.