Increased perceived self-efficacy facilitates the extinction of fear in healthy participants

  • Self-efficacy has been proposed as an important element of a successful cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT). Positive changes in perceived self-efficacy have been linked to an improved adaptive emotional and behavioral responding in the context of anxiety-provoking situations. Furthermore, a positive influence of increased self-efficacy on cognitive functions has been confirmed. The present study examined the effect of verbal persuasion on perceived self-efficacy and fear extinction. Healthy participants were subjected to a standardized differential fear conditioning paradigm. After fear acquisition, half of the participants received a verbal persuasion aimed at increasing perceived self-efficacy. The extinction of fear was assessed immediately thereafter on both the implicit and explicit level. Our results suggest that an increased perceived self-efficacy was associated with enhanced extinction, evidenced on the psychophysiological level and accompanied by more pronounced decrements in conditioned negative valence. Changes in extinction were not due to a decrease in overall emotional reactivity to conditioned stimuli (CS). In addition, debriefing participants about the false positive feedback did not affect the processing of already extinguished conditioned responses during a subsequent continued extinction phase. Our results suggest that positive changes in perceived self-efficacy can be beneficial for emotional learning. Findings are discussed with respect to strategies aimed at increasing extinction learning in the course of exposure-based treatments.

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Metadaten
Author:Armin ZlomuzicaGND, Friederike PreußerGND, Silvia SchneiderORCiDGND, Jürgen MargrafORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hbz:294-58630
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.00270
Parent Title (English):Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2018/07/05
Date of first Publication:2015/10/16
Publishing Institution:Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universitätsbibliothek
Tag:Open Access Fonds; anxiety disorders; exposure therapy; extinction; fear conditioning; self-efficacy; self-regulation; top-down control
Volume:9
First Page:270-1
Last Page:270-12
Note:
Article Processing Charge funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Open Access Publication Fund of Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, Artikelnummer 270
Institutes/Facilities:Forschungs- und Behandlungszentrum für psychische Gesundheit
Dewey Decimal Classification:Philosophie und Psychologie / Psychologie
open_access (DINI-Set):open_access
faculties:Fakultät für Psychologie
Licence (English):License LogoCreative Commons - CC BY 4.0 - Attribution 4.0 International