Background: With global rates of mental illness on the rise, it is crucial to better understand how to improve well-being. Loneliness and cognitive biases are well-established risk factors for anxiety and depression. One bias—negative interpretation bias (i.e., the tendency to interpret ambiguous stimuli negatively)—is strongly linked to the development of anxiety and depression. In this talk, I review research on interpretation bias and practical applications, including strategies to reduce this bias. I will also present the results of research investigating the relationships between interpretation bias, loneliness, perspective-taking, and anxiety and depression.


Method: Sixty-six university students (Mage = 20.58, SDage = 1.93) completed measures of loneliness (UCLA Loneliness Scale), negative interpretation bias (Scrambled Sentences Task), anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale), and perspective-taking (a 4 measure composite: Four-Item Mentalizing Index, 10-item Cambridge Mindreading Voice Battery, Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and 5-item Autism Quotient).


Results and Discussion: Loneliness was positively correlated with negative interpretation bias (r = .42, p < .001), anxiety (r = .59, p < .001), and depression (r = .58, p < .001). Negative interpretation bias was also associated with anxiety and depression (r = .54, p < .001). Loneliness explained nearly half the variance in anxiety (48.8%) and depression (49.3%; p < .05). Interestingly, perspective-taking abilities may serve as a protective factor against loneliness, depression and negative interpretation bias. That is, individuals with higher perspective-taking abilities showed lower levels of loneliness, depression and interpretation bias compared to those with high perspective-taking (ps < .05). These findings offer valuable insights for clinicians, researchers, educators, and policymakers. Implications for interventions targeting interpretation bias and perspective-taking to improve mental health will be discussed.