Investigating a critical evaluation tendency in social anxiety (original) (raw)
Related papers
2016
Models of social phobia suggest that socially anxious individuals have critical evaluation expectancies, expecting others to be inherently critical in their appraisal of performance. One potential source for these expectancies is generalization or projection of an individual’s own critical evaluation tendencies. We recruited 89 students, informing them that they would be asked to deliver an impromptu speech. Participants were shown three short pre-recorded speeches and asked to rate the performance of the speaker in each. Participants were also asked to rate how well they thought they would perform. While social anxiety symptoms were correlated with predictions of poorer self-performance, the relationship between social anxiety symptoms and a tendency to more critically appraise the performance of others was only observed for speakers who displayed low levels of anxiety symptoms.
Self-Evaluative Biases in Social Anxiety
Cognitive Therapy and Research, 2005
This study examined how social anxiety influences the evaluation of others, and the evaluation of the self. High (HSA; n = 24) and low (LSA; n = 24) socially anxious undergraduates watched a video of either an anxious or confident actor presenter and rated various aspects of the presenter and the presentation. Participants then gave their own speech, which they later evaluated with the same measures used to evaluate the other presenter. Both the HSA and LSA groups rated the anxious actor presenter more negatively than the confident actor presenter on most measures. The two groups did not differ in their evaluations of the actor presenters. However, when rating their own performance, the HSA group rated themselves more negatively on some measures than did the LSA group, even after controlling for observable differences in performance and anxiety between the two groups. This suggests that although socially anxious individuals may have clear performance skills deficits, they overestimate the extent to which these behavioral deficits are apparent to others.
Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, 2012
This study compared FNE and FPE scales in predicting anxious responding to a social challenge. 101 undergraduate participants completed a social manipulation requiring them to deliver a 3 minute videotaped speech they believed would be rated by faculty judges. Participants then received bogus positive, negative, or no feedback and were informed they were selected to present their speech directly to the panel of judges. FNE was the strongest predictor of state anxiety following the initial speech task, while FNE and FPE predicted somatic response to this task. Regardless of feedback type, FPE was a significant predictor of anxiety during the second speech task. Results are consistent with an overall cognitive model of social anxiety and suggest that FPE and FNE are distinct predictors of anxiety the under specific conditions.
Responses of the Socially Anxious to the Prospect of Interpersonal Evaluation
Journal of Personality, 1990
We predicted that socially anxious people who are faced with the prospect of an interpersonal evaluation will act in an inhibited and withdrawn way Subjects who scored low or high on a measure of social anxiety told four stones about themselves to an interviewer In the anticipated-evaluation condition, the subjects learned that after they had told their stones, the interviewer would tell them her impressions of them In the control condition, no mention was made of an evaluation Judges rated transcnpts of the stones As predicted, socially anxious subjects who thought they were goii^ to be evaluated (relative to anxious subjects in the control condition and nonanxious subjects in both conditions) told shorter stones, and the events in their stones were commonplace rather than unique Their stones were also less revealing about ttiem as individuals, and less vivid Contrary to a second prediction, socially anxious subjects who expected to be evaluated did not act any less inhibited or withdrawn when their mterviewers were descnbed as very trusting than when they were descnbed as very wary Implications are discussed People who are socially anxious care very much about the kinds of impressions they convey to others but feel insecure about their ability to project the image they would like (Leary, 1983b, Schlenker & Leary,
Social Anxiety and Its Effects on Performance and Perception
Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 1998
This study examined whether the socially anxious show deficits in performance on a social task as well as how their anxiety and competence relate to judgments they make about themselves and others. Ratings from a panel of judges were used to compare men of high and low social anxiety on their performances in a simulated job interview. Participants also viewed videotapes of themselves and others and rated responses for content, fluency, nonverbal, and global competence. Contradicting predictions of a performance deficit model, high levels of social anxiety had no detrimental effect on participants' performance or on their ability to judge their own performance. In contrast, observer-rated competence was related to a number of significant effects for social judgment tasks. Implications for treatment of social anxiety and research on social anxiety are discussed.
Journal of clinical psychology, 2012
OBJECTIVES: The aim of this pilot study was to investigate whether patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) differ from controls in the quality of skill-related behaviors displayed during a speech and in overall behavioral adequacy as perceived by observers and by the patients themselves. DESIGN: A total of 18 SAD patients and 18 controls were screened by a diagnostic interview and took part in a 3-minute speech of their own choosing. For each videotaped speech, observers rated the adequacy of the skill-related behaviors and overall performance adequacy. After the experiment, participants were asked to rate their own overall performance adequacy. RESULTS: The results showed that SAD patients exhibited significantly worse voice intonation and fluency of the speech, however no differences were found in global self-ratings. Moreover, the performance evaluations of the SAD group were consistent with the observers, while the controls evaluated their performance lower than the observer...
Core beliefs, automatic thoughts and response expectancies in predicting public speaking anxiety
Personality and Individual Differences, 2013
The present study examined the relationships between broad core cognitions, situation-specific automatic thoughts, and response expectancies in regard to their relative contributions to public speaking anxiety. Ninety-nine socially anxious participants (mean age = 20.25) completed measures of irrational beliefs and automatic thoughts specific to public speaking. Participants were then announced the task-giving a speech in front of a virtual reality audience-and response expectancies were measured. Subjective anxiety was measured just before the speech. As predicted, response expectancies and negative automatic thoughts specific to public speaking were each found to mediate the relationship between irrational beliefs and public speaking anxiety. Multiple mediation analysis indicated that the core irrational beliefs generated specific beliefs (i.e., response expectancies that primed automatic thoughts) that acted on speech-related anxiety.
Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 2018
Highlights Examined evaluations of visible anxiety and confidence of others in individuals with social anxiety disorder and healthy controls Experimentally manipulated patterns of social comparisons in social anxiety disorder Both individuals with and without social anxiety evaluate anxious individuals more poorly than visibly confident ones, with no group differences found Individuals with social anxiety are more likely to engage in upward comparisons with confident others, while healthy individuals engage in predominant downward comparisons
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2008
Speakers systematically overestimate their communication effectiveness . We argue that doing so is adaptive, reducing the risk of social anxiety and withdrawal from social situations. This hypothesis was tested by having speakers who scored low and high for fear of negative evaluation (FNE), a hallmark of social phobia, attempt to convey a specific meaning of ambiguous statements to a listener and then estimate their communication effectiveness. Low-FNE speakers consistently overestimated their effectiveness, expecting the listener to understand their intended meaning more often than listeners actually did. In contrast, high-FNE speakers' estimates of communication effectiveness were consistent with the listener's actual understanding. Signal detection analysis revealed that low-and high-FNE speakers were equally able to discriminate communication success from failure, but low-FNE speakers exhibited a stronger positive response bias. In conclusion, overestimating one's communication effectiveness is adaptive, and accurate estimation is associated with dysfunction.