Fig. 2

Significant indirect effect of social rejection sensitivity on the relationship between negative interpretation bias and emotional disorder symptoms. Social rejection sensitivity = social rejection sensitivity measured by the total score on the O²S³ [25]; Negative interpretation bias = negative interpretation bias measured as proportion of grammatically correct sentences with negative valence on the pre-ASST scrambled sentences task [23]; emotional disorder symptomatology = emotional disorder symptoms measured as composite score of standardized DASS-21 total score [30] and standardized SDQ internalizing score [31]. The paths include standardized β estimates of the associations. The figure includes the effect of negative interpretation bias on emotional disorder symptoms with (above the arrow) and without (below the arrow) controlling for social rejection sensitivity. Age was included as a covariate in the model but is not depicted for simplicity. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.