Fear of positive evaluation linked to aberrant neural processing of social acceptance and rejection: Evidence from ERPs and neural oscillations

As a core feature of social anxiety disorder (SAD), the neural mechanisms through which fear of positive evaluation (FPE) influences the processing of social feedback remain unclear. This study employed the Social Judgment Paradigm (SJP) to compare neural activity in individuals with high and low FPE when they received expected or unexpected social acceptance or rejection feedback. Behavioral results indicated that the low FPE group exhibited a positive expectancy bias, whereas the high FPE group showed no such tendency. Neuroelectrophysiological findings revealed that unexpected feedback elicited larger feedback-related negativity (FRN) and stronger theta oscillations compared to expected feedback. More importantly, high FPE individuals demonstrated abnormal patterns in the late stages of social feedback processing: increased cognitive conflict in response to expected acceptance feedback (enhanced P3 amplitude and theta activity), blunted reactivity to unexpected acceptance feedback (reduced theta activity), and hypersensitivity to unexpected rejection feedback (enhanced P3 amplitude and theta activity). The findings suggest that high FPE individuals exhibit a bidirectional differentiation in processing social evaluative information, which may lead to reduced positive emotional experiences and impaired emotion regulation. Despite the limitations of using a non-clinical sample, our results reveal FPE-specific neural characteristics and their role in abnormal social feedback processing. Notably, the P3 and theta oscillations may serve as potential physiological markers for identifying social anxiety individuals primarily characterized by fear of positive evaluation, thereby providing direction for developing more targeted therapeutic interventions in the future.