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

Armin Zlomuzica, Friederike Preusser, Silvia Schneider, Jürgen Margraf, Armin Zlomuzica, Friederike Preusser, Silvia Schneider, Jürgen Margraf

Abstract

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.

Keywords: anxiety disorders; exposure therapy; extinction; fear conditioning; self-efficacy; self-regulation; top-down control.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Experimental design. The fear conditioning procedure consisted of a habituation, acquisition, extinction, and continued extinction phase, with 15-min breaks imposed after acquisition as well as extinction. After fear acquisition (first experimental manipulation), the experimental group (EG) received a verbal feedback to induce self-efficacy expectations, whereas the control group (CG) received none. After extinction (second experimental manipulation), the false feedback was revised for half of the experimental group (EG2), whereas it was administered to half of the control group (CG1). Dependent measures included valence and contingency ratings as well as skin conductance responses (SCRs).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Valence ratings towards the CSs after the different phases of fear conditioning [habituation (hab), acquisition (acq), extinction (ext); left] as well as changes from extinction to continued extinction [expressed in differential ratings (CS+ minus CS−); right], depicted separately for each group. Data expressed as means ± 1 SEM; based on N = 48 subjects (EG n = 24, CG n = 24; EG1 n = 12, EG2 n = 12, CG1 n = 12, CG2 n = 12).
Figure 3
Figure 3
CS-UCS contigency ratings towards the CSs after the different phases of fear conditioning [habituation (hab), acquisition (acq), extinction (ext); left] as well as changes from extinction to continued extinction [expressed in differential ratings (CS+ minus CS−); right], depicted separately for each group. Data expressed as means ± 1 SEM; based on N = 48 subjects (EG n = 24, CG n = 24; EG1 n = 12, EG2 n = 12, CG1 n = 12, CG2 n = 12).
Figure 4
Figure 4
SCRs towards the CSs during the different phases of fear conditioning [habituation (hab), acquisition (acq), extinction (ext); left] as well as changes from extinction to continued extinction [expressed in differential SCRs (CS+ minus CS−); right], depicted separately for each group. Data expressed as means ± 1 SEM; based on N = 48 subjects (EG n = 24, CG n = 24, EG1 n = 12, EG2 n = 12, CG1 n = 12, CG2 n = 12).

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