Predictors of Biased Self-perception in Individuals with High Social Anxiety: The Effect of Self-consciousness in the Private and Public Self Domains (original) (raw)
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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.
Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2010
Patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) not only fear negative evaluation but are indeed less likeable than people without SAD. Previous research shows social performance to mediate this social anxietye social rejection relationship. This study studied two pathways hypothesized to lead to poor social performance in social anxiety: increased self-focused attention and negative beliefs. State social anxiety was experimentally manipulated in high and low-blushing-fearful individuals by letting half of the participants believe that they blushed intensely during a 5 min getting-acquainted interaction with two confederates. Participants rated their state social anxiety, self-focused attention, and level of negative beliefs. Two confederates and two video-observers rated subsequently likeability (i.e., social rejection) and social performance of the participants. In both groups, the social anxietyesocial rejection relationship was present. Although state social anxiety was related to heightened self-focused attention and negative beliefs, only negative beliefs were associated with relatively poor social performance. In contrast to current SAD models, self-focused attention did not play a key-role in poor social performance but seemed to function as a by-product of state social anxiety. Beliefs of being negatively evaluated seem to elicit changes in behavioral repertoire resulting in a poor social performance and subsequent rejection.
Self-Focused Cognition in Social Anxiety: A Review of the Theoretical and Empirical Literature
Behaviour Change, 2016
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterised by a marked and persistent fear of social or performance situations. Cognitive models suggest that self-focused cognitive processes play a crucial role in generating and maintaining social anxiety, and that self-focused cognition occurs prior to, during, and following social situations (Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997). There is a substantial body of empirical evidence demonstrating that socially anxious individuals engage in selffocused cognition during and following a social or performance situation. A smaller but growing body literature suggests that a similar process occurs prior to such situations, and that these three processes are interdependent. Furthermore, the vast majority of research to date indicates that self-focused cognitive processes are detrimental, and that they generate and maintain social anxiety in a variety of ways. However, there remains considerable scope for research to further explicate the role of these processes in the maintenance of SAD, and to enhance interventions designed to ameliorate their negative effects.
Negative self-focused cognitions mediate the effect of trait social anxiety on state anxiety
The cognitive model of social anxiety predicts that negative self-focused cognitions increase anxiety when anticipating social threat. To test this prediction, 36 individuals were asked to anticipate and perform a public-speaking task. During anticipation, negative self-focused cognitions or relaxation were experimentally induced while self-reported anxiety, autonomic arousal (heart rate, heart rate variability, skin conductance level), and acoustic eye-blink startle response were assessed. As predicted, negative self-focused cognitions mediated the effects of trait social anxiety on self-reported anxiety and heart rate variability during negative anticipation. Furthermore, trait social anxiety predicted increased startle amplitudes. These findings support a central assumption of the cognitive model of social anxiety.
Cognitive therapy and research, 2002
This study investigated the effects of heightened self-awareness (SAW) on various aspects of social anxiety. High and low socially anxious (SA) participants (N = 72) had a conversation with two confederates. SAW was manipulated with mirrors: half of the participants could see their reflection in three large mirrors during the conversation. In contrast with expectations, SAW did not increase fear, blushing, physiological arousal (skin conductance and facial coloration), and negative thinking, and did not interfere with task performance. Independent of the experimental manipulation, high SA persons displayed a generally higher level of facial coloration (blushing) than low SA persons. No evidence was found for the prediction that high SA persons overpredict their blushing and underpredict their social skills, compared to low SA persons.
Self-focused attention before and after treatment of social phobia
Behaviour Research and Therapy, 2000
It has been hypothesized that eective psychological treatment for social phobia changes the person's representation of the self in a more positive direction. In order to test this hypothesis, we analyzed 506 thoughts that were endorsed by 23 social phobic individuals while anticipating socially stressful situations before and after exposure therapy. Treatment ecacy was assessed with the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI) [Turner, S. M., Beidel, D. C., Dancu, C. V., & Stanley M. A. (1989) An empirically derived inventory to measure social fears and anxiety: the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory. Psychological Assessment, 1, 35±40)]. Subjects endorsed signi®cantly fewer negative selffocused thoughts after treatment (on average 8.7% of the thoughts) than before treatment (26.5%, p < 0.005). These changes were highly correlated with pre±post dierence scores in the social phobia subscale of the SPAI (r = 0.74, p < 0.0001). Implications of the results for the cognitive model of social phobia will be discussed. 7
The effects of social evaluation and looming threat on self-attentional biases and social anxiety
Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 2010
This paper examines how two proposed cognitive vulnerabilities of social anxiety, the fear of negative evaluation, and looming cognitive style may combine with socially demanding situations in predicting social anxiety symptoms and performance deficits. Fifty-two individuals previously identified as possessing these two cognitive vulnerabilities were randomly assigned to conditions in a 2 (high versus low social evaluation) Â 2 (high versus low temporal looming) experimental design. Significant interaction effects were found for: (a) residual change in anxiety symptoms from baseline level, and (b) performance on a speech task. Specifically, cognitively at-risk individuals exhibited the most increase in anxiety and the most performance deficits in the condition where social evaluation and temporal looming were high. In addition, a mediational effect of illusion of transparency (a form of self-attentional bias) between situational demands and residual change in anxiety was found. Implications arising from these results are discussed.
Focussing Attention on Oneself Increases the Perception of Being Observed by Others
Journal of experimental psychopathology, 2016
Patients with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) often report elevated levels of self-focussed evaluative attention (SFEA), and seem excessively concerned with being observed by others. This study tested whether SFEA increases the perception of being observed by others. A sample of 52 high and 52 low socially anxious participants estimated the percentage of people 'looking at you' in several matrices of faces. A control task used matrices of clocks. SFEA was manipulated. As predicted, increasing SFEA led to significantly higher estimates of people 'looking at you' in both groups. Estimates on the control task were not affected by SFEA, thus the effects appear specific to social stimuli. These findings suggest that the increased levels of SFEA that characterise patients with SAD could contribute to their enhanced perception of being observed by others. The findings have implications for the role of attention training in the treatment of SAD.