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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 8, 2026

Using the Threat Probability Task to Assess Anxiety and Fear During Uncertain and Certain Threat

Using the Threat Probability Task to Assess Anxiety and Fear During Uncertain and Certain Threat

Published on: September 12, 2014

Enhanced avoidance behavior in social anxiety: evidence from a probabilistic learning task.

Stephan Stevens¹, Andreas Peters, Anna Abraham

¹Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Cologne, Germany; Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Giessen, Germany.

Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry

|August 28, 2013

Summary

High socially anxious individuals exhibit heightened avoidance learning, particularly towards neutral social cues. This suggests that ambiguous social stimuli strongly motivate avoidance in social anxiety disorder.

Keywords:

Avoidance Emotional facial expressions Probabilistic learning Social anxiety

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Last Updated: May 8, 2026

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Area of Science:

Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Clinical Psychology

Background:

Social phobia is defined by avoidance of feared social situations.
Avoidance learning is a key, yet understudied, aspect of social anxiety.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate avoidance learning in individuals with high social anxiety.
To explore how social anxiety influences the learning of avoidance behaviors.

Main Methods:

A probabilistic instrumental learning paradigm was employed.
Participants learned to avoid neutral or angry faces by selecting cues with varying probabilities of success.
20 high socially anxious and 20 non-socially anxious individuals participated.

Main Results:

All participants learned to select cues that effectively led to face disappearance.
High socially anxious individuals more frequently chose the high-probability avoidance cue.
High socially anxious individuals were slower to respond, especially when avoiding neutral faces.

Conclusions:

Avoidance behavior in social anxiety may stem more from the motivation to avoid than from contingency learning.
Ambiguous social cues, like neutral faces, may strongly trigger avoidance in social anxiety.