The Impact of Psychological Security on Individual Interpretation Bias: The Crucial Role of Social Situational Factors

Psychological security, the subjective perception of environments and relationships as stable, predictable, and controllable, shapes how individuals interpret ambiguity. We examined how this security drives interpretation biases across early and later processing stages in social and nonsocial contexts among 228 participants. Individuals with high psychological security consistently showed a positive interpretation bias across all stages, whereas those with low security lacked this pattern. Notably, only in social contexts did the low-security group lack an early positive bias and develop a later-stage negative interpretation bias, defined as the tendency to draw pessimistic conclusions during delayed elaborative processing. This effect was absent in nonsocial situations. These findings clarify underlying cognitive mechanisms, providing a theoretical foundation for future practical applications.