Beneficial Effects of Role Reversal in Comparison to role-playing on negative cognitions about Other's Judgments for Social Anxiety Disorder.

Background And Objectives: Negative beliefs about other's judgments play an important role in the development and maintenance of social anxiety disorder. The present experiment examined the effects of role-playing followed by role reversal compared to role-playing twice on altering these negative cognitions.

Methods: Thirty-six adult social anxiety patients were randomized into two conditions: a role-playing condition in which 18 participants role-played an anxiety-provoking social situation twice, or a role reversal condition in which 18 participants role-played an anxiety-provoking social situation followed by enacting the same situation using role reversal. Before the start of the experiment, patients were asked to report their negative cognitions about the other's judgments. Next, they were asked to rate the believability of these negative cognitions, as well as the probability and cost estimates of negative judgments by the other person, at three time-points: before the first block of role-playing, after the first block of role-playing, and after the second block of the experiment.

Results: Results demonstrated that role-playing followed by role reversal had a stronger effect on the most negative cognitions than role-playing twice.

Limitations: The most important limitation of the present study is that there was no control group to assess the effects of role-playing alone. Moreover, the second block of the experiment was repetitive in role-playing, however, it was a new task in role reversal.

Conclusions: The results support the hypothesis that role reversal is an effective technique that can be used to correct negative cognitions about other's judgments in SAD.