Self-verification is a form of confirmation bias in which people seek feedback that is consistent with existing self-views, and which is believed to be a factor in the persistence of affective disorders. While prior research shows that cognitive biases toward negative information and the use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies interact to maintain negative feelings, existing theories have not examined whether self-verification also interacts with emotion regulation strategies to maintain negative self-views. In this study, we aimed to clarify the connections between self-verification and confirmation bias, emotion regulation, and mental health outcomes. The study involved two sessions in which participants were evaluated on their current emotional state by measuring their depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms, their habitual use of emotion regulation strategies, and a social feedback selection task designed to determine their use of self-verification and confirmation bias. Our results support a separation of confirmation bias and self-verification is warranted. Our results also support a relationship between adaptive emotion regulation and self-verification, but not between maladaptive emotion regulation and self-verification. Future work should address the limitations of this study. Investigating these relationships will improve our understanding of the causes of self-verification and how mental health conditions such as depression are maintained through biased feedback-seeking behaviors.
