# Can social support figures enhance fear extinction in patients with social anxiety?

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES · 2022 · $82,677

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
 It is estimated that roughly one third of adults in the US will be affected by a fear-related disorder over
the course of their lifetime. These disorders, including diagnoses such as generalized anxiety disorder, social
anxiety disorder, or post-traumatic stress disorder, are marked by disruptive fears that can interfere with daily
life and have harmful long-term consequences on health and well-being. Yet, even the most successful
treatment to date, exposure therapy (a set of procedures that employs fear extinction processes to reduce fear)
has limited effects, with discomfort during therapy leading to drop-out and relapse remaining a common
occurrence. Thus, investigation of methods to augment exposure therapy treatments and improve fear
reduction strategies is critical for improving the well-being of individuals with fear-related disorders.
 Recent work has revealed that social support may represent one such method, demonstrating that
social support reminders reduce the acquisition of fear and enhance the extinction of fear in healthy adults.
These findings are unexpected, as they are in direct contrast with current views that all safety signals, including
social support figures, are harmful during fear-reduction interventions. Thus, while current views would suggest
that these cues enhance acquisition and reduce extinction, social support reminders in fact reduce acquisition
and enhance extinction. This divergence may be explained by the crucial role of social support in human
survival; specifically, the neurobiological mechanisms that have evolved to reinforce social bonds appear to
overlap with the systems that support fear learning, making social support uniquely poised to reduce fear.
 These previous findings hint at the exciting possibility that social support may play an important role in
improving outcomes for individuals with fear-related disorders. In particular, the presence of social support
reminders (e.g., pictures) may enrich strategies to prevent fear acquisition in individuals at risk for developing
disruptive fears and augment exposure therapy treatments, enhancing extinction outcomes. However, while
the fear-reducing effects of social support have been demonstrated in healthy adults, these effects have never
been tested in adults with fear-related disorders. Thus, the proposed studies will be the first to explore whether
social support 1) reduces fear acquisition and 2) enhances fear extinction in adults with social anxiety disorder
(SAD) and healthy controls. In the first study, we will test whether the presence of a social support image (vs.
smiling stranger image) reduces acquisition in participants with SAD (n=50, 25 females) and healthy controls
(n=50, 25 females). In the second study, we will test whether the presence of a social support image (vs.
smiling stranger image) leads to enhanced extinction in participants diagnosed with SAD (n=50, 25 females) as
well as healthy controls (n=50, 25 fem...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10554015
- **Project number:** 3R21MH125274-02S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES
- **Principal Investigator:** Naomi Ilana Eisenberger
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $82,677
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2020-12-01 → 2023-11-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10554015

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10554015, Can social support figures enhance fear extinction in patients with social anxiety? (3R21MH125274-02S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10554015. Licensed CC0.

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