Negative mental imagery contributes to symptom maintenance in social anxiety disorder (SAD). Here, we investigated the effects of image morphing, a brief mental strategy designed to facilitate access to positive images. Participants with SAD and healthy control (HC) participants were randomly assigned to receive either image morphing or supportive counseling. Although initial training and 1-week daily practice were successful in equipping morphing participants across groups with the required skill, those assigned to morphing failed to demonstrate differential improvements in positive affect, negative affect, or self-perception relative to control participants during a subsequent social stress task. Ancillary analyses revealed that the number of positive details contained in retrieved or morphed images prior to the task significantly predicted the level of positive affect reported after the task, but this effect was observed only for HC participants. We discuss the need for future research to refine innovative imagery-based psychotherapeutic strategies for social anxiety.

中文翻译：

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应对社交焦虑症中的负面心理图像：调查图像变形的潜在好处

负面的心理意象有助于维持社交焦虑症（SAD）的症状。在这里，我们研究了图像变形的影响，这是一种旨在简化获取正面图像的简短心理策略。具有SAD的参与者和健康对照组（HC）的参与者被随机分配接受图像变形或支持性咨询。尽管最初的培训和1周的日常练习成功地使变形参与者具备了所需的技能，但是分配给变形参与者的参与者未能证明在随后的社交活动中，与对照组相比，积极影响，负面影响或自我知觉有所不同压力任务。辅助分析显示，任务执行前在检索到的或变形的图像中包含的积极细节数量显着预测了任务执行后报告的积极影响水平，但仅对于HC参与者观察到了这种影响。我们讨论了对未来研究的需求，以完善基于图像的创新性社交焦虑心理治疗策略。