The role of perceived self-efficacy on “pathological” and “therapeutic” generalization processes in the fear conditioning paradigm

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ekrem Dere
• Subject Area: Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 568510058

In this project, we would like to investigate how an increase in perceived self-efficacy (induced by the retrieval of a specific episodic or autobiographical memory (Dere et al., 2010; Rader et al., 2019c) affects de novo fear conditioning, extinction and generalization of the conditioned fear response in healthy participants without clinically relevant fears. The intervention to increase perceived self-efficacy will therefore be applied at various points in a fear conditioning test sequence in order to investigate its effect on subsequent test phases such as the acquisition (Experiment 1), generalization (Experiment 2) and extinction (Experiment 3) of a conditioned fear response. In this context, the fear conditioning paradigm serves as an experimental model for the development and expansion of pathological fear. We hope that the induction of an increased perception of self-efficacy will inhibit the acquisition and generalization of a conditioned fear response, and in contrast accelerate the extinction of the conditioned fear response. Experiment 4 is of central importance in this project because it reflects a fundamental problem of exposure therapy: the original fear-inducing stimuli that led to the development of pathological fear are not available for exposure training and one must therefore limit oneself to similar stimuli. With Experiment 4 we would like to investigate whether the induction of an increased perception of self-efficacy will facilitate the generalization of extinction training that uses a new stimulus that is perceptually similar to the original stimulus and transfers to the originally used conditioned stimulus and blocks the conditioned fear response. With the 4 experiments of this project, we would like to determine whether an increase in the perceived self-efficacy will on one hand decrease the pathological generalization of conditioned fear and on the other hand increase therapeutic generalization processes within the framework of the fear conditioning paradigm.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Armin Zlomuzica