# The impact of state and trait general and social anxiety on theory of mind

## TL;DR

This study examines how general and social anxiety affect theory of mind, finding no significant impact despite increased anxiety levels in participants.

## Contribution

The study distinguishes between state and trait anxiety types and uses a false belief task to assess theory of mind.

## Key findings

- No significant effects of general or social anxiety on theory of mind performance were found.
- There were no significant correlations between trait anxiety and theory of mind.
- Anxiety groups reported increased anxiety, but this did not impair theory of mind.

## Abstract

Theory of mind is an important skill to function in society. There is evidence that anxiety can impair the ability to use this skill effectively; however, current research is inconclusive, uses heterogeneous measures of theory of mind, and lacks distinction between anxiety types, despite these being known to present differently in clinical populations. False belief tasks are standard practice for assessing theory of mind in children and autistic participants and have also been found to adequately detect theory of mind differences in neurotypical adults yet are not systematically used throughout the current literature. Given that egocentrism reflects difficulty inhibiting one’s own perspective, a core component of theory of mind, the present study examined egocentric bias using a false belief task. One hundred and sixty-eight participants completed the Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) and the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) prior to being randomly allocated to a general anxiety, social anxiety, or neutral mood condition. Following mood manipulation, participants completed a false belief task with either privileged knowledge or no knowledge. A 3 × 2 ANOVA found no significant main or interaction effects of general or social anxiety and false belief knowledge on performance, despite a reported increase of anxiety in the anxiety groups. There were also no significant correlations between trait general or social anxiety on theory of mind. The findings from this study do not support the previous evidence that anxiety increases egocentrism. Future studies should continue to distinguish systematically between state, trait, general, and social anxiety, and use reliable theory of mind measures.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-026-36718-5.