Matching Method to Mind: Personality-Decision Style Profiles and Differential Responsiveness to Defocusing Interventions

This dataset contains experimental data from a study examining how defocusing interventions reduce the focusing illusion—a cognitive bias where individuals disproportionately emphasize salient negative events (e.g., social blunders) when predicting social repercussions, contributing to social anxiety.<br><br><b>Study Overview</b><br>Ninety-seven college students (ages 18-25) participated in a randomized between-subjects experimental design. Participants evaluated eight social blunder scenarios, rating anticipated embarrassment, shame, perceived social costs, and fear of negative judgment under control or defocusing intervention conditions.<br><br><b>Key Findings</b><br>Defocusing interventions significantly reduced perceived negative social costs (p = .010, d = 0.54) and negative judgment expectations (p = .004, d = 0.61). Cluster analysis identified three personality-decision style profiles with <br>differential intervention responsiveness. Analysts (high conscientiousness) showed largest benefits for concrete social cost reduction (d = 0.85); Explorers (high openness/extraversion) for reducing judgment-related anxiety (d = 0.96). Agreeableness moderated effects across profiles.<br><br><b>Dataset Contents</b><br>Sample size: N = 97<br>Study design: Between-subjects experimental design<br>Age range: 18-25 years<br>Population: College students<br>Country: India<br>IRB approval: Yes<br>Data de-identification: Complete<br>Open data: Yes<br>Big Five personality traits and decision-making styles, social anxiety symptoms (SPIN), outcome measures, clustering analysis results (K-means and Latent Profile Analysis validation), and descriptive statistics by <br>condition and profile.