Regulating emotion during imaginal exposure to social anxiety: impact of the specificity of information processing

The present study investigates the emotional impact of a specific vs. generic mode of information processing during imaginal exposure. Forty-nine socially anxious students mentally relived a personally experienced stressful social situation. Half of the participants were instructed to activate generic elements of the target event (i.e., elements repetitively experienced in similar social situations); the other half had to recall the specific features of the target event. Results showed that participants who focused on specific elements reported less distress than those who focused on generic features. Clinical implications are discussed.