The Interplay between Social Anxiety Disorder, Priming, and First Impressions

Abstract

People form first impressions quickly and often without conscious awareness, which significantly shapes social judgments. While the rapidity of forming impressions can be adaptive in everyday social interactions, they bring biases that may lead to consequential outcomes. Such seriousness is manifested particularly in areas where objectivity matters, such as clinical diagnosis, hiring decisions, and political evaluation. One symptom of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is a profound sensitivity to social evaluation. This intense fear of judgment often results in negative interpretation biases, which leads to distorted perceptions of both self and others. In parallel, priming can subtly activate associations, which implicitly affects impression formation. This review synthesizes results from multiple studies to examine the interaction between SAD, priming, and the formation of first impressions, as well as proposing integration of priming into clinical settings - as a way to quantify treatment progress to enhance transparency, and as a possible unconscious intervention tool to reduce the impact of SAD.