No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Transactional approach to social anxiety and the genesis of interpersonal closeness: Self, partner, and social context
Abstract
It remains unclear whether social anxiety interferes with the generation of closeness during initial encounters. We addressed the question of whether perceived closeness between strangers differs as a function of dyad characteristics (i.e., self and partner levels of social anxiety) and social context. We conducted an experiment with 90 participants randomly assigned to either a 45-minute personal disclosure or small-talk dyadic conversation. Multilevel modeling results yielded a 3-way interaction, such that the effect of social anxiety on closeness generated during the interaction was moderated by social anxiety reported by interaction partners and social context. In the personal disclosure condition, perceived closeness was greatest when the most socially anxious individuals interacted with each other. In the small-talk condition, perceived closeness was greatest when the least socially anxious individuals interacted with each other. Across conditions, partners with substantial differences in social anxiety (i.e., mixed dyads) reported relatively less closeness than partners with similar levels of social anxiety. Social anxiety effects were not attributable to depressive symptoms or physical attraction to partners. These findings suggest that neglecting specific qualities of interaction partners and social situational factors may lead to spurious conclusions in understanding interpersonal outcomes related to social anxiety.
... However, despite the debilitating nature and biases associated with SA, there are some contexts where the negative consequences of SA can be attenuated. For instance, supportive experiences with close friends and family may protect against SA symptomology (La Greca & Lopez, 1998;Van Zalk & Van Zalk, 2015), and greater SA is associated with greater closeness in high-disclosure conversations (Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). Moreover, conflicting evidence surrounds the literature concerning the physiological symptomology of SA. ...
... Greater SA is associated with anxious expectations of social rejection or negative evaluation, feelings of inferiority to peers, and lower confidence and self-esteem (Clarke & Fox, 2017;London et al., 2007). People with greater SA underestimate their own interpersonal skills and social functioning (Kashdan & Savostyanova, 2011;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). For example, even though people with SA exhibit social behavior deficits within conversations, their estimates of their own conversation performance were even lower than evaluations by conversation partners or outside observers (Kashdan & Savostyanova, 2011;Voncken & Bogels, 2008). ...
... Furthermore, the type of conversation can influence the experiences accompanying SA. When both dyad members in closeness-generating or high-disclosure conversations had high levels of SA, dyad members experienced fewer expectations of scrutiny (Kashdan & Savostyanova, 2011;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). This pattern of evidence suggests that social support situations may be especially important for people with greater SA, potentially leading to increased motivation for active participation. ...
Social anxiety (SA) is characterized by anxious symptomology and fear during social situations, but recent work suggests that SA may not necessarily be associated with negative interpersonal and intrapersonal outcomes in support contexts. The current research investigates the discrepancies between self-perceptions, behavior, and physiological responses associated with SA in social support conversations with close friends. Specifically, we examined the associations between SA and positive and negative affect, perceptions of demands and resources, and responsiveness. Additionally, we used the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat to understand the physiological responses associated with SA. Participants (79.9% White, 9.8% Black or African American, 10.3% Multiple races or other; 78.7% Female), totaling 172 undergraduate friend dyads, completed self-report measures and had physiological responses recorded while they discussed a problem unrelated to the friendship. Trained coders rated responsive behaviors exhibited during the conversation. Results revealed that greater SA was associated with greater negative perceptions of social interactions (greater negative affect, fewer perceived resources, and greater perceived demands). However, cardiovascular reactivity and behavioral responses within the conversation, as well as perceptions of partners' behavior after the conversation, contrasted with these negative perceptions. Indeed, greater SA was associated with greater sympathetic arousal (indicative of greater task engagement), but not with greater challenge or threat, and SA was not associated with perceived partner responsiveness or responsive behaviors. These results add to the growing body of research that suggests people with greater SA show inconsistencies between their conscious appraisals of social situations and their physiological responses.
... Much of the health and well-being benefits of close relations are attributed to intimate interactions such as the exchange of personal thoughts and feelings, touch, and sexual affection (Prager, 1995). Experimental research has been highly valuable for drawing causal conclusions on intimacy processes and their outcomes (e.g., Aron et al., 1997;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). The most widely used paradigm to experimentally induce intimacy between two subjects is the Fast Friends Procedure (FFP) by Aron et al. (1997). ...
... For example, Kashdan and Wenzel (2005) demonstrated an association between induced intimacy and physical attraction. Significant increases in liking after using adaptions of the FFP were found in multiple studies (Kuang, 2012;Sprecher, 2014;Sprecher & Hampton, 2017;Sprecher et al., 2013aSprecher et al., , 2013bStürmer et al., 2018). ...
... A first limitation concerns the confederates. Confederates have been used in other studies applying the FFP (Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005;Martinson et al., 2016;Taylor et al., 2017), and may indeed be a necessity in individuals with CM, due to confidentiality issues and potentially risky situations (i.e., if an individual discloses information on abuse or neglect during the paradigms; compare also Martinson et al., 2016). However, the use of confederates may preclude generalizability of our findings. ...
The Fast Friends Procedure (FFP) is a widely used experimental paradigm to induce emotional intimacy. Besides exploring the validity of a German translation of the paradigm (n = 46), we developed an extension of the FFP that induces sexual intimacy and assessed heart rate, high-frequency heart rate variability, and electrodermal activity responses to the FFP and its extension. Furthermore, we examined its applicability to individuals with childhood maltreatment (n = 56), who frequently suffer from intimacy-related difficulties. Intimacy, positive affect, liking, and attraction increased during the FFP and partly during the sexual intimacy extension in both study groups. Moreover, both groups showed physiological responses consistent with positive social interactions. The use of the German FFP and its sexual intimacy extension can thus be recommended for research in the general population and in individuals with childhood maltreatment, although more studies are needed to further validate the paradigms.
... These individuals have persistent fears of evaluation when in social situations or performance settings (Rapee & Heimberg, 1997). While studies suggest that these fears are largely the product of negative biases regarding one's social performance (e.g., Alden & Wallace, 1995), these individuals may actually perform poorly in social interactions and thus garner negative evaluations from others (e.g., Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). It may be that negatively biased perceptions of one's social performance are not initially founded, but carrying such beliefs into social interactions leads to a selfdirected focus (e.g., to monitor one's own performance and protect the self from social threat; Wells & Papageorgiou, 1998) and a subsequent inability to attend to interaction partners. ...
... Data suggest that in dyads, the presence of at least one highly socially anxious individual alters the quality of an interaction. In a lab-based social interaction, researchers found that during a personal disclosure condition, closeness was ranked highest when two strangers, both high in social anxiety, were paired together (Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). In a small-talk condition, however, greater closeness was reported when two strangers, both low in social anxiety, were paired together. ...
... In a small-talk condition, however, greater closeness was reported when two strangers, both low in social anxiety, were paired together. Across conditions, partners with marked discrepancies in their levels of social anxiety reported less closeness than those with similar levels of social anxiety (Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). This study suggests that socially anxious individuals may be comforted by mutual anxiety when making personal disclosures, while less socially anxious people are better able to navigate awkward small talk and still form close bonds. ...
For decades, researchers and practitioners have theorized psychological disorder and health as opposite ends of a single continuum. We offer a more nuanced, data driven examination into the various ways that people with psychological disorders experience well-being. We review research on the positive emotions, meaning and purpose in life, and social relationships of people diagnosed with major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, social anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, and trauma-related disorders. We also discuss when and how friends, family members, and caregivers of these people are adversely impacted in terms of their well-being. Throughout, we highlight important, often overlooked findings that not all people with mental illness are devoid of well-being. This review is meant to be illustrative as opposed to comprehensive, synthesizing existing knowledge and inspiring explorations of unclear or undiscovered territory.
... This approach highlights the role of "actor effects" (e.g., one's own social anxiety predicting one's own closeness), "partner effects" (e.g., a partner's social anxiety predicting one's own closeness), and interactions between actor and partner effects (e.g., both one's own and a partner's social anxiety jointly predicting closeness). Research on closeness and social anxiety pursuing this approach has found that while social anxiety typically inhibits relationships, people higher in social anxiety may become closer to those with similar levels of social anxiety (Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). This finding, taken with previous research indicating that socially anxious people tend to choose more socially anxious friends in a network (Van Zalk et al., 2011), highlights the importance of considering the social anxiety of the self and others when understanding how social anxiety is linked to closeness. ...
... We predicted that individuals with elevated social anxiety would experience flatter declines in cortisol across the interaction, or perhaps even increases in cortisol. Further, more socially anxious people may desire less closeness or feel less closeness during social interactions, yet may feel close to others who match their level of social anxiety (e.g., Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). In light of the potential overlap between social anxiety and attachment anxiety, analyses controlling for attachment anxiety also were performed (see Supplementary Material). ...
... 95% CI [À.02, .02]. In sum, although the results of Kashdan and Wenzel (2005) suggested that closeness is highest when dyad members match on social anxiety, the present data suggest that dyad members are closest when both members are low in social anxiety. None of the effects in this model were moderated by the type of closeness measured (felt vs. desired, ps > .16). ...
Socially anxious people report less closeness to others, but very little research has examined how social anxiety is related to closeness in real-time social interactions. The present study investigated social anxiety, closeness, and cortisol reactivity in zero-acquaintance interactions between 84 same-sex dyads (168 participants). Dyads engaged in either a high or low self-disclosure discussion task and completed self-report measures of closeness and desired closeness post-task. Salivary cortisol was collected before, during, and after the self-disclosure task. Multilevel models indicated that in the high self-disclosure condition, individuals higher in social anxiety displayed flatter declines in cortisol than those lower in social anxiety; cortisol declines were not significantly related to social anxiety in the low self-disclosure condition. Further, across both conditions, individual’s social anxiety was associated with decreased levels of closeness and desired closeness, particularly when individuals were paired with partners higher in social anxiety. These findings are discussed in relation to previous work on hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal function, social anxiety, and interpersonal closeness.
... In terms of SA, the evidence for similarity is mixed. While research suggests that opposite-sex strangers report more closeness following an intimacy-building exercise when they have similar, rather than dissimilar, levels of SA (Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005) and having similar levels of SA predicts more positive relational outcomes (i.e. increased closeness, more uncertainty reduction) during the early stages of friendship development (Boucher, Jacobson, & Cummings, 2015), there is contradictory evidence within established friendships. ...
... From this perspective, they may seek similarity given the higher levels of closeness reported among dyads with similar levels of SA (e.g. Boucher et al., 2015;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). ...
... However, if socially anxious individuals are motivated by companionship (Bradshaw et al., 1999, as cited in Bradshaw, 2006, they should look for similarity rather than complementarity given the higher levels of closeness reported among pairs with similar levels of SA (e.g. Boucher et al., 2015;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). Thus, another goal of the current study was to explore whether high-SA participants would be more likely to recruit a roommate who had similar or dissimilar levels of SA. ...
The social surrogate hypothesis proposes that people with higher social anxiety (HSA) recruit others to accompany them into social situations. We tested this hypothesis with college roommates using both hypothetical (Study 1) and retrospective (Study 2) measures, while assessing roommate's perceptions of recruitment and how social surrogacy might influence liking between roommates. Across two studies, we found that HSA participants were less likely to enter social situations alone (i.e. higher conditional entry); however, HSA was related to recruitment only when participants considered hypothetical scenarios, not when recruitment was assessed globally or retrospectively. There was little evidence that HSA participants' roommates were aware of these behaviours, although there was preliminary evidence that less social anxiety might increase liking when roommates perceived more conditional entry. We also found preliminary evidence that social anxiety may be negatively related to liking when participants were less likely to recruit an alternate surrogate if their roommate was unavailable. Taken together, these preliminary findings emphasize the importance of studying the surrogacy process from an interpersonal/dyadic perspective and using methods that will differentiate between anticipated (which may be assessed by hypothetical scenarios) and enacted recruitment behaviours. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology.
... To date, at least two studies have examined the effects of SA similarity on interpersonal outcomes during live interactions. Kashdan and Wenzel (2005) found that opposite-sex dyads matched on high levels of SA reported more closeness following an intimacy-building task than did dyads contrasted on levels of SA. In fact, dyads matched on high levels of SA actually reported more closeness than did participants matched on low levels of SA (see Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005, for a discussion of possible reasons for this difference). ...
... Kashdan and Wenzel (2005) found that opposite-sex dyads matched on high levels of SA reported more closeness following an intimacy-building task than did dyads contrasted on levels of SA. In fact, dyads matched on high levels of SA actually reported more closeness than did participants matched on low levels of SA (see Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005, for a discussion of possible reasons for this difference). More recently, Kashdan and Savostyanova (2011) found that similarity influenced participants' level of accuracy, meta-accuracy, and perceived dissent following initial interactions. ...
... The purpose of the current study was to determine whether SA similarity would have the same beneficial effects as has been demonstrated with unacquainted opposite-sex dyads (e.g., Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005) during the early stages of same-sex friendships. To examine the effects of SA similarity among friends who were in the stages between superficial interactions and the more intimate interactions associated with close friendship (Hays, 1988), we recruited friends who had known to each other for approximately 1 month. ...
In studying the interpersonal consequences of social anxiety (SA), researchers generally have neglected to account for partner levels of SA. Therefore, in the current study, we examined how SA similarity would influence interpersonal closeness and uncertainty during the early stages of friendship development. Fifty-six same-sex friend pairs completed measures of SA, closeness, and uncertainty after knowing each other for approximately 1 month and then again 6 weeks later. Although higher levels of SA at Time 1 were related to more uncertainty, similarity had no effect on closeness or uncertainty at Time 1. However, friends matched on SA experienced increased closeness and decreased uncertainty over the 6 weeks, suggesting SA similarity may become increasingly important as friendships develop.
... The personal disclosure condition was expected to provide ample opportunity for social attractiveness and status, and potential acceptance to be presented to others and evaluated by them. Prior research has found these two social contexts to lead to different interpersonal (Aron, Melinat, Aron, Vallone, & Bator, 1997;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005) and affective (Kashdan & Roberts, 2006) outcomes. 1 Finally, based on our conceptual framework, we sought to examine a theoretically relevant causal mechanism for any relations between social anxiety and post-event rumination-selfpresentation concerns. ...
... We first examined the validity of our experimental manipulation. As noted in other independent reports from this dataset (Kashdan & Roberts, 2006;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005), compared to the small-talk condition, participants in the personal disclosure condition were more likely to disclose information about their innermost self, t(81) = 3.81, p < 0.001, d = 0.85, disclose personally important experiences and events, t(81) = 2.32, p < 0.05, d = 0.52, and openly express feelings about their partner, t(81) = 1.87, p = 0.06, d = 0.42. Thus, as designed, the personal disclosure task facilitated greater intimate disclosure than the small-talk condition. ...
... The current manuscript focuses on non-overlapping hypotheses with prior work using this dataset(Kashdan & Roberts, 2006;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). Prior work focused on trait predictors of changes in affect from pre-to postinteraction (without any attention to depressive symptoms;Kashdan & Roberts, 2006) and interpersonal closeness generated during the interaction(Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). ...
Using a self-presentation perspective, we hypothesized that during social interactions in which social attractiveness could be easily appraised by others, more socially anxious individuals would be more prone to ruminate and rumination would have more adverse emotional consequences. After assessing social anxiety and depressive symptoms, unacquainted college students participated in 45-min structured social interactions manipulated to induce personal self-disclosure or mimic superficial, small-talk. Affective experiences were assessed immediately after and 24h after social interactions. Results found that social anxiety was associated with negative post-event rumination more strongly among those with elevated depressive symptoms. Further, at higher levels of social anxiety, post-event rumination was associated with increases in NA following personal disclosure interactions and decreases in NA following small-talk interactions. Individuals with more depressive symptoms experienced increases in NA following small-talk interactions, but not personal disclosure interactions. Contrary to expectation, positive relations between social anxiety and rumination were not mediated by self-presentation concerns during interactions. Fitting with relevant theory, findings implicated symptom and social contextual variables that moderate the affective consequences of rumination.
... Of clinical importance, distinct types of social fear may vary in terms of their debilitating nature. Theorists of SAD have argued that social fears involving interactions with strangers (e.g., Carron et al., 1999;Kagan, 2014;Kashdan and Wenzel, 2005) or authority figures (e.g., Gilbert, 2000;Swallow and Kuiper, 1988) may predict an especially inauspicious course, including risk for comorbid disorders. As a result, one cannot rule out the possibility that fear and avoidance vis-à-vis a given social situation may relate to different symptoms of depression. ...
... First, when considering the relationships between fear and avoidance of distinct situations among individuals with SAD, fear and avoidance of meeting strangers, avoidance of going to party, and fear of speaking up at a meeeting and of being the center of attention collectively appear as the most influential SAD nodes. Such observation does not come as a surprise; instead, they are in keeping with theories suggesting that social situations involving novel or unfamiliar individuals (e.g., Carron et al., 1999;Kagan, 2014;Kashdan and Wenzel, 2005) or to be at the center of attention (e.g., Cornwell et al., 2011) carry more weight than other types of social situations in the maintenance of SAD. ...
Background. Social anxiety disorder (SAD) and depressive symptoms often covary. Yet, uncertainty still abounds vis-à-vis the individual symptom-to-symptom associations between these two disorders. Inspired by the network approach to psychopathology that conceptualizes comorbidity as a natural consequence arising from bridge symptoms that can transmit activation from one disorder to the other, we applied network analytic methods to characterize the associations among core symptoms of SAD—i.e. fear and avoidance of social situations—and comorbid depressive symptoms among 174 individuals with DSM-IV-TR criteria for SAD.
Methods. We first explored the general structure of these symptoms by estimating a regularized partial correlation network using the graphical LASSO algorithm. Then, we specifically focused on the symptoms’ importance and influence. Of critical interest was the estimation of the unique influence of each symptom from one disorder to all symptoms of the other disorder using a new metric called bridge expected influence.
Results. The graphical LASSO revealed several cross-associations between SAD and comorbid depression. For each disorder, symptoms exhibiting the strongest cross-association with the other disorder were identified.
Limitations. Given our cross-sectional data, our findings can only suggest hypotheses about cause-effect relationships.
Conclusions. This study adds to a small but growing empirical literature revealing that the co-occurrence between two disorders is best portrayed as sets of symptom-to-symptom connections. As some individual symptoms show differential association in the co-occurrence between SAD and depression, those symptoms may be valuable targets for future research and treatment.
... However, the same group of studies suggests that increased self-disclosure and reduction in safety behaviors can overcome this effect, given time. Indeed, some evidence suggests that, at least when paired with another person with higher social anxiety and given specific self-disclosure instructions, people with higher social anxiety can achieve a strong sense of closeness quite quickly: During a short laboratory self-disclosure task, the highest ratings of closeness were associated with dyads in which both partners had higher social anxiety (Kashdan and Wenzel, 2005). A crucial issue in friendship development and quality among people with higher social anxiety may therefore be under what circumstances they are willing to self-disclose, drop safety behaviors, and persist in interactions. ...
... However, warmer and more dominant individuals, while potentially appealing, might be judged as globally desirable and thus potentially "out of my league" by socially anxious individuals (e.g., Bielak and Moscovitch, 2013;Mahone, Bruch, & Heimberg, 1993). Previous studies (e.g., Kashdan and Wenzel, 2005) suggest that people with higher social anxiety feel more comfortable pursuing relationships (whether friend or romantic) with people who they perceive as similar to themselves, whom they may rate more positively than people who they see as dissimilar (see e.g., . However, existing data suggest that recruiting groups of participants with extreme levels (high versus low) of social anxiety does not mean that the friends of these participants will differ in social anxiety (Rodebaugh, Lim, Shumaker, Levinson, & Thompson, 2015). ...
Social anxiety disorder is associated with interpersonal dysfunction, but it is not clear why people with the disorder feel unsatisfied with their relationships. One possibility is that higher social anxiety could lead to changes in sensitivity to interpersonal traits. We examined whether social anxiety moderates the types of interpersonal evaluations people make regarding warmth and dominance. We developed vignettes in which central characters systematically varied in dominance and warmth and asked two samples of participants (undergraduate students, n = 176, and online workers, n = 403) to rate their willingness to interact with, and the social desirability of, these characters. Participants in general reported stronger desire to interact with warmer and less dominant characters, and rated warmer and more dominant characters as being more socially desirable. People with higher social anxiety exhibited greater tolerance for colder and more submissive characters on both rated dimensions. The perceived similarity of the characters accounted for the bulk of these effects. Participants indicated a higher desire to interact with characters more similar to themselves, and people with higher social anxiety were more likely to rate submissive and cold characters as being like themselves. The results have implications for clinical interventions for social anxiety disorder.
... As such, perceiving a roommate as anxious may be generally detrimental to relationship assessments, across all types of roommate relationships. Moreover, the same ambiguous cues that signal anxiety (e.g., fidgeting, averted gaze) are also those that communicate disinterest (Dovidio & LaFrance, 2013); yet, self-reported anxiety is often not related to actual interest in one's partner or the relationship (Kashdan & Roberts, 2006;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005;Peters, 1978). These findings suggest that perceiving one's partner as anxious can interfere with forming accurate impressions of one's partner's actual relationship interest. ...
... We hypothesized that under high levels of perceived anxiety, perceivers would demonstrate low tracking accuracy because perceived anxiety would interfere with the ability to track one's partner's true relationship intentions; this would be the case for all types of roommate relationships. Perceiving one's partner as anxious can also interfere with the motivation to see one's partner positively, particularly during the initial stage of relationships (Dovidio, West, Pearson, Gaertner, & Kawakami, 2007;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005;Vorauer, 2006). Thus, we hypothesized that perceivers would also demonstrate less positive directional bias in their perceptions of their partners' interest in the relationship under relatively high levels of perceived anxiety; this would generally be the case for all types of roommate relationships. ...
Previous research suggests that the perception of anxiety in intergroup interactions can be detrimental to relationship formation. However, the underlying processes through which this occurs remain unclear. The present longitudinal study, which studied same-and different-race/ethnicity roommates over 6 weeks, investigated whether perceived partner anxiety moderates two types of processes previously shown to facilitate relationship development: (a) tracking accuracy, the relationship between perceivers' assessments of their partner's interest in remaining roommates and the partner's stated interest and (b) positive directional bias, representing overestimation of partners' relationship interest. Under high levels of perceived anxiety, both accuracy and directional bias were generally low, independent of the dyad type. In contrast, when perceived anxiety was relatively low, Whites and minorities in cross-race dyads and Whites in same-race dyads showed a positive directional bias in their evaluations; Whites in cross-race relationships also achieved tracking accuracy. Implications of perceived anxiety for perceptual dynamics in cross-group friendships are discussed.
... Specifically, research has revealed that depressed individuals have more depressed friends and feel worse after interacting with a non-depressed person [18]. Other studies have found that socially anxious individuals choose friends who are socially anxious [19], and feel closer to socially anxious compared to non-anxious targets when discussing personal topics [20]. Thus, exposure to a high causal uncertainty target might provide a positive validation experience for a high causal uncertainty perceiver. ...
... Future studies examining the effects of depression and anxiety on interpersonal attraction should also assess perceiver ideals. This may help us understand whether previous findings [18][19][20] were due to depressed and anxious participants holding different ideals than nondepressed and nonanxious individuals, or whether perceivers were instead showing a preference for actual over ideal similarity. If it is the latter, then researchers could examine moderators of the basis of attraction. ...
People who are high in causal uncertainty doubt their own ability to understand the causes of social events. In three studies, we examined the effects of target and perceiver causal uncertainty on attitudes toward the target. Target causal uncertainty was manipulated via responses on a causal uncertainty scale in Studies 1 and 2, and with a scenario in Study 3. In Studies 1 and 2, we found that participants liked the low causal uncertainty target more than the high causal uncertainty target. This preference was stronger for low relative to high causal uncertainty participants because high causal uncertainty participants held more uncertain ideals. In Study 3, we examined the value individuals place upon causal understanding (causal importance) as an additional moderator. We found that regardless of their own causal uncertainty level, participants who were high in causal importance liked the low causal uncertainty target more than the high causal uncertainty target. However, when participants were low in causal importance, low causal uncertainty perceivers showed no preference and high causal uncertainty perceivers preferred the high causal uncertainty target. These findings reveal that goal importance and ideals can influence how perceivers respond to causal uncertainty in others.
... Social phobia (SP) is characterized by distress about social situations, fear of potential rejection, scrutiny, and embarrassment, in social or performance situations (Kashdan and Wenzel, 2005). Cognitive models state that symptoms are activated through perceived social-evaluative situations (Clark and Wells, 1995;Rapee and Heimberg, 1997). ...
... Interpersonal sensitivity is a widely studied interpersonal variable and regarded as a persistent personality characteristic, typical of 'depression prone personality'. Social phobia and depression share characteristics of high negative affect, autonomic arousal (Brown et al., 1998a), cognitive behavioural, and interpersonal features (Beuke et al., 2003;Brown et al., 1998b;Kashdan and Wenzel, 2005). Interpersonal sensitivity is characterized by excessive preoccupation and sensitivity to interpersonal relationships, 'social feedback', others' behaviour, and mood, perceived or actual situations of criticism/rejection and avoidance (Boyce and Parker, 1989;Boyce et al., 1993). ...
This exploratory study assessed interpersonal sensitivity and dysfunctional cognitions in patients with social phobia and depression. Thirty patients with social phobia/depression were compared with community sample of 30 participants on measures of interpersonal sensitivity and dependency. The clinical sample also responded to measures of dysfunctional cognitions, anxiety and depression. Test retest reliability for the IPSM was established. Results indicated higher interpersonal sensitivity and dependency in clinical sample and positive correlations between interpersonal sensitivity, dependency and dysfunctional attitudes. Anxiety was associated with both interpersonal measures. The paper discusses implications of interpersonal sensitivity for psychological interventions and cultural differences.
... Researchers have also examined the impact of closeness within the relationships of those with social anxiety. In one study, closeness was measured during interactions between either two highly socially anxious individuals, one non-socially anxious and one highly socially anxious individual, or two non-socially anxious individuals (Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). Dyads in which both partners were either highly socially anxious or nonsocially anxious experienced the greatest amount of closeness, whereas mixed-dyads reported the lowest amount of closeness. ...
... Theory suggests people high on emotion regulation flexibility are well-attuned to social cues in choosing regulatory strategies (e.g., Bonanno & Burton, 2013). In contrast, people with high social anxiety, who are often socially impaired (e.g., Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005;Rodebaugh et al., 2014), show signs of inflexible emotion regulation-over-relying and placing considerable 6 of 11 -DOORLEY ET AL. value on controlling, avoidance, and concealing their emotions regardless of situational cues (Daniel et al., in press;Dryman & Heimberg, 2018;Goodman, Kashdan, & İmamoğlu, in press;Goodman, Kashdan, Stiksma, & Blalock, 2019;O'Toole, Zachariae, & Mennin, 2017). There is reason to believe psychological flexibility and social functioning covary, but causal links are unclear. ...
Psychological flexibility is the tendency to respond to situations in ways that facilitate valued goal pursuit. Psychological flexibility is particularly useful when challenges arise during goal pursuit that produce distress. In acceptance and commitment therapy, psychological flexibility is considered the pinnacle of emotional health and well-being. A growing body of research demonstrates that psychological flexibility leads to psychological benefits and adaptive behavior change. Yet, much of what we know, or think we know, about psychological flexibility hinges on a single measurement approach using the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ and AAQ-II). Research suggests the AAQ-II is highly correlated with distress itself rather than flexible responses to distress. Existing approaches that assess psychological flexibility ignore the context in which flexibility matters most: the pursuit of valued goals. Below, we review theory and research on psychological flexibility, including its associations with healthy functioning, its measurement, and its overlap with related constructs. We discuss how gaps between theory and measurement impede our understanding and review promising evidence for a new measure of psychological flexibility. We provide new research directions in an effort to create a more generalizable foundation of knowledge. Soc Personal Psychol Compass. 2020;e12566. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/spc3
... A rather puzzling finding was that we found evidence for the opposite pattern as well: when high anxious participants expected clear dislike, they increased their self-disclosure level. This finding is partially in line with the findings of Kashdan and Wenzel (2005) in which participants were instructed to self-disclose during a 45 min conversation. Dyads of high socially anxious individuals showed the highest selfdisclosure levels compared to dyads of low anxious individuals. ...
Background and objectives
This study aimed to unravel the relationship between socially anxious individuals’ expectation of being (dis)liked and actual likeability by looking at the mediation role of both strategic and automatic social behavior: Self-disclosure as well as mimicry were examined.
Method
Female participants (N = 91) with various levels of social anxiety participated in a social task with a confederate. Before the task, participants indicated their expectation of being liked by the confederate. Afterwards, objective video-observers rated the likeability of the participants before and after the social task as well as their level of self-disclosure and mimicry.
Results
Social anxiety correlated negatively with the expectation to be liked but was not related to observer ratings of likeability, self-disclosure or mimicry. However, degree of social anxiety moderated the relation between expectations and self-disclosure. As expected, participants with low levels of social anxiety disclosed more if they expected to be liked. A reversed pattern was found for the high socially anxious participants: Here, higher expectations of being liked were related to less self-disclosure.
Limitations
The study used an analogue female sample. Our social interaction task was highly structured and does not reflect informal day-to-day conversations.
Conclusion
Socially anxious individuals function rather well in highly structured social tasks. No support was found for declined likeability or disrupted mimicry. Nevertheless, high socially anxious individuals did have a cognitive bias and show a self-protective strategy: when expecting a neutral judgment they reduce their level of self-disclosure. This pattern probably adds to their feelings of social disconnectedness.
... Service users with social anxiety will experience problems with social connectivity in almost all areas of their lives and therefore tend to have fewer meaningful relationships (Sparrevohn and Rapee, 2009), even in comparison with those who have depressive illness (Rodebaugh, 2009). They have an anxiety and negative bias over others evaluating them in social settings, and even if unfounded, can be a precursor to a self-fulfilling prophesy (Kashdan and Wenzel, 2005). These clients often appear well adjusted but are in fact, Practice © 2020 MA Healthcare Ltd less likely to disclose reciprocal personal information, which reduces intimacy and relationship building. ...
This is the sixth article in a series that explores the meaning of positive psychology and the importance of applying the latest related research findings for the wellbeing of the mental health workforce. It will focus on the positive psychology interventions to increase social connectivity as a vital idea for ‘happiness’, while experiencing their uplifting effect through contemporary use in the field of mental health nursing. It will explain what the term means and report on neurological changes that occur when it is practiced. Finally, it emphasises the importance of effective social connectivity in how the application can benefit the client, the individual and the organisation. The practical tasks provided in the boxes throughout the article will help the reader identify what social connectivity means for them and understand how to further develop its transferability through evidence-based, user-friendly exercises.
... This estimate is based on group differences in single time-point dependent variables; for multilevel models with multiple records per participant for a given dependent variable, this can be considered an underestimation of available power. For within-person analyses, drawing from research on social/contextual factors in social anxiety (Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005), an effect size of r ϭ .20 was specified. Simulation studies of multilevel power suggest that designs with 80 Level 2 units (i.e., participants) with 14 Level 1 units (i.e., days) provide sufficient power (i.e., Ͻ.80) available to detect effect sizes Ն.20 (Nezlek, 2011(Nezlek, , 2012Raudenbush & Liu, 2000). ...
This study examines relationships between emotion beliefs and emotion regulation strategy use among people with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and a psychologically healthy control group. Using experience-sampling methodology, we tested group differences in 2 types of emotion beliefs (emotion control values and emotion malleability beliefs) and whether emotion beliefs predicted trait and daily use of cognitive reappraisal and emotion suppression. People with SAD endorsed higher emotion control values and lower emotion malleability beliefs than did healthy controls. Across groups, emotion control values were positively associated with suppression (but unrelated to reappraisal), and emotion malleability beliefs were negatively associated with suppression and positively associated with reappraisal. We also addressed 2 exploratory questions related to measurement. First, we examined whether trait and state measures of emotion regulation strategies were related to emotion control values in different ways and found similar associations across measures. Second, we examined whether explicit and implicit measures of emotion control values were related to daily emotion regulation strategy use in different ways-and found that an implicit measure was unrelated to strategy use. Results are discussed in the context of growing research on metaemotions and the measurement of complex features of emotion regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... Between-group and within-person effect sizes were determined by drawing on meta-analytical and experience-sampling research on social anxiety (e.g. Kashdan, 2007;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). For between-group analyses, an effect size of r= .35 ...
People with social anxiety disorder (SAD) display maladaptive attitudes towards emotions. In this experience-sampling study, we explored the extent to which people with SAD viewed anxiety and pain as an impediment to pursuing personal strivings and deriving meaning in life. Participants were adults diagnosed with SAD and a control comparison group who completed baseline questionnaires and daily surveys for 14 consecutive days. People with SAD perceived anxiety and pain as interfering with progress towards their strivings to a greater degree than healthy controls. Perception of emotion-related goal interference was inversely associated with daily meaning. This relationship was moderated by diagnostic group such that there was a strong, inverse association with daily meaning in life for people with SAD; for controls, no association was found. Results suggest that negative beliefs about the value of anxiety and pain are pronounced in people with SAD and may impede derivation of meaning in life.
... Anecdotally, most people would agree that they are far more likely to experience social anxiety when attending a cocktail party with strangers than during happy hour with their extended family, yet researchers have not systematically examined the role of different interaction partners in determining the anxiety response (Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). Nonetheless, there is some empirical evidence suggesting that the social anxiety response is sensitive to the type of interaction partner. ...
In three articles, I examine the evolved function of social anxiety. Social anxiety – like other responsive defenses – is useful only when the magnitude of the response is appropriate to the demands of situations that involve genuine social threats. In the first article, I review the literature on the ultimate function of social anxiety and argue that the computational systems that underlie social anxiety function to: 1) detect high stakes social interactions; and, 2) minimize the risk of subsequent negative evaluation. In the second article, I present the results of a series of studies in which participants from across the distribution of levels of trait social anxiety completed a threatening or non-threatening priming task, then were asked to identify the emotion displayed in a series of faces. Results revealed a curvilinear relationship between dispositional social anxiety scores and response time, suggesting that moderate social anxiety is advantageous in certain situations. The final article used content analysis to examine the characteristics of the interaction partners and types of situations that college-aged participants recall – as well as the vocabulary and pronouns used – when asked write about an anxiety-provoking situation.
... In summary, we demonstrated across three studies that high CU people perceive their social interactions and interaction partners more negatively than do low CU people. Interestingly, unlike matching effects observed with variables associated with CU, such as depression (Rosenblatt & Greenberg, 1991) and social anxiety (Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005), these negative perceptions did not improve when high CU people interacted with another high CU partner. Furthermore, although these effects need to be replicated, people interacting with high CU partners did not appear to share these negative social perceptions, suggesting that the negative perceptions may not reflect truly problematic conversations. ...
Causal uncertainty (CU) refers to persistent doubts people have about their ability to understand causes of social events. Although such confusion about social dynamics should affect social exchanges, previous research has been limited to the realm of social cognition (i.e., computer‐based studies exploring perceptions of hypothetical others). In three studies, we explored CU effects during real‐time social interactions with unacquainted conversational partners. We found that high CU participants perceived their conversations and conversational partners more negatively than did low CU participants and that these negative social perceptions stemmed from an inability to sufficiently reduce their cognitive uncertainty. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
... Ever since its inclusion in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder (DSM-III; American Psychiatric Association, APA 1980), research on Social Phobia (SP) has increased tremendously. SP is now considered to be a common anxiety disorder, characterized by significant distress and fear regarding social interactions, fear of negative evaluation, and fear of embarrassment or possible humiliation in social or performance situations (Kashdan and Wenzel 2005). Patients with SP report hypersensitivity to criticism and feelings of inferiority (American Psychiatric Association 2000). ...
We examined perfectionism, interpersonal sensitivity and dysfunctional cognitions in patients with Social Phobia (SP). The sample consisted of a clinical group with a diagnosis of SP (n = 30) and a non clinical group (n = 30), matched for age and gender. Both groups were assessed on Frost’s Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (FMPS), Interpersonal Sensitivity Measure (IPSM), and Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (DAS). The clinical sample was also assessed on Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS), Beck’s Depression Inventory-II, Eysenck’s Personality Inventory-Neuroticism sub-scale (EPI- N). The two groups were compared on FMPS, IPSM and DAS using t-test. Associations between FMPS, IPSM, DAS and predictors of social anxiety and depression were examined. The clinical group scored higher on perfectionism, interpersonal sensitivity and dysfunctional cognitions. There was no significant association between total scores on FMPS and IPSM. However subscales of IPSM and FMPS were correlated. Doubt about Actions was associated with Separation Anxiety (r = 0.520) and Timidity (r = 0.407). Organization was related to Interpersonal Awareness (r = 0.371) and Separation Anxiety (r = 0.407). Parental criticism was negatively associated with fragile inner self. DAS was positively correlated with FMPS and IPSM. Interpersonal sensitivity emerged as a significant predictor of social anxiety. Discriminant Functional Analysis indicated that concern over mistakes, organization, fragile inner self, separation anxiety discriminated between the clinical and non-clinical groups.
... Indeed, Davila and Beck (2002) showed that SAs have a dependent interpersonal style in close relationships, suggesting that they rely excessively on close others to compensate for their problems in social contact. Moreover, in the study by Kashdan and Wenzel (2005), dyads of high and low SAs participated in conversations of 45 min of personal disclosure. Afterwards, the SAs dyads appreciated these social interactions more than the low SAs or mixed high and low SAs dyads. ...
Earlier research has revealed implicit avoidance of social stimuli in social anxiety (SA). This study investigated such reactions in anticipation of social interaction. High (n = 24) and low (n = 22) SA females were assessed in anticipation of a getting-acquainted conversation (anticipation) and in a no-conversation-expected (neutral) condition. The Face-Turn Approach Avoidance Task was used in which participants responded to profiles of human faces or control stimuli by either pulling (approach) or pushing (avoidance) a joystick. Upon pulling, the stimuli turned toward the participant, while they turned away upon pushing. The results demonstrated the expected decreased approach response to faces in the neutral condition for the high SAs compared to the low SAs group. Unexpectedly, in the anticipation condition the high SAs showed increased approach tendencies to faces whereas, the low SAs demonstrated a decreased approach response. The implicit social approach response of the high SAs in the anticipation condition is discussed.
... The fear and avoidance inherent in social anxiety disorder (SAD) suggests that SAD should have a measurable impact on the positive domain of friendship because of difficulties establishing or maintaining new acquaintanceships. Even putting aside outright avoidance, abundant evidence (e.g., Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005;Meleshko & Alden, 1993; Voncken, Dijk, de Jong, & Roelofs, 2010) has established that social anxiety results in judgments on the part of observers and interaction partners that could interfere with making new friends. More generally, reviews of the literature have suggested that SAD tends to confer two primary interpersonal problems: (a) problems with assertion and (b) constraints in expressing warmth and positivity (Alden & Taylor, 2004). ...
Previous research suggests that social anxiety disorder (SAD) has a specific relationship with impairment in friendship quality; however, potential moderators of this relationship have not been tested. The current study examines whether the specific effect of SAD on friendship quality is stable or varies across gender and ethnicity in a large epidemiological dataset. Results indicate that the underlying construct of friendship quality differed slightly but significantly between men and women; as a result, effects of SAD were tested in men and women separately. After partially constraining friendship quality across ethnic groups, our results indicated that the relationship between SAD and friendship quality remained robust in all groups. In addition to replicating the finding that SAD specifically relates to perceived friendship quality, the current study highlights the need to test whether underlying constructs such as friendship quality are consistent across the groups that make up heterogeneous samples.
... In the small-talk condition, partners took turns asking and answering superficial questions; in the closeness-generating condition, task questions required gradually increasing levels of personal disclosure to answer them. Prior research has shown that these two common conversations lead to different social (Aron, Melinat, Aron, Vallone, & Bator, 1997;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005) and emotional (Kashdan & Roberts, 2007) outcomes. The closeness-generating situation resembles an interaction often leading to the development of intimate, meaningful relationships (Reis & Gable, 2003)-providing greater opportunity for a person's intelligence, attractiveness, and personality to be presented clearly and in turn, valued or devalued by partners. ...
To expose biases in self-perceptions of people high in social anxiety, information is needed on actual and perceived informant reports following social situations. We measured trait social anxiety (SA) in 90 college students arranged in pairs for "getting acquainted" conversations. Half participated in a small-talk task, where they took turns answering superficial questions; half participated in a closeness-generating task, where questions required gradual increases in self-disclosure. Afterward, students rated themselves and their partner on positive and negative attributes and how they think their partner viewed them. People with high SA judged themselves more negatively and less positively than their partner did (accuracy); when interacting with a partner endorsing low SA, they possessed enhanced negativity biases about how they expected to be viewed (meta-accuracy), and believed their partner's judgments were less positive than their own low self-judgments (perceived dissent). Conversely, people with low SA showed evidence of a self-enhancement bias about the impression they made on low SA strangers. Other moderators of the social cognitions of people with high SA included gender and the social situation (distortions being amplified in men and small-talk conversations). Our findings suggest that the study of SA cannot be understood using decontextualized approaches, instead requiring consideration of the synergy among the person, partner, and situation.
... Also, Study 1 established clearly that autonomy-primed dyads did better and control-primed dyads worse compared to neutral-primed dyads; thus, given the time-consuming nature of the dyadic procedure, Study 2 examined only relative differences between autonomy and control. Finally, additional covariates of biased responding and trait shyness were measured and statistically controlled to account for their demonstrated past effects on interpersonal and personal reactivity (e.g., Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005). ...
Two studies examined interaction quality and joint performance on two creative tasks in unacquainted dyads primed for autonomy or control orientations. It was hypothesized that autonomy-primed dyads would interact more constructively, experience more positive mood, and engage the task more readily, and as a result these dyads would perform better. To test this, Study 1 primed orientation and explored verbal creative performance on the Remote Associates Task (RAT). In Study 2, dyads were primed with autonomy and control orientation and videotaped during two joint creative tasks, one verbal (RAT) and one nonverbal (charades). Videotapes were coded for behavioral indicators of closeness and task engagement. Results showed that autonomy-primed dyads felt closer, were more emotionally and cognitively attuned, provided empathy and encouragement to partners, and performed more effectively. The effects of primed autonomy on creative performance were mediated by interpersonal quality, mood, and joint engagement.
... It is less clear how social phobia impacts specific types of relationships. Relevant studies in adults have focused primarily on strangers (e.g., Creed & Funder, 1998;Hope, Sigler, Penn, & Meier, 1998;Kashdan & Wenzel, 2005;Meleshko & Alden, 1993) and romantic partners (e.g., Davila & Beck, 2002;Wenzel, 2002), with little data addressing the friendships of adults with problematic social anxiety. Treatment is largely consistent with the focus of available research, with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) treatments for social phobia making no special reference to friendships (e.g., Clark et al., 2006;Heimberg & Becker, 2002). ...
Although it is clear that people with social phobia have interpersonal impairment, evidence that social phobia (as opposed to other mental disorders) affects friendship in particular is lacking. Two large epidemiological datasets were used to test whether diagnosis of social phobia is related to perceived friendship quality above and beyond perceived family relationship quality, diagnosis of other mental disorders, and a variety of demographic variables. After Bonferroni correction, social phobia was the only diagnosis related to perceived friendship quality above and beyond other factors, such that people with social phobia reported more impaired friendship quality. Social phobia's effect was similar in magnitude to demographic characteristics in both samples. The current study demonstrates that social phobia is specifically related to perceived friendship quality, suggesting that this aspect of social phobia's effects is worthy of further study.
Social isolation is identified as a leading cause of loneliness, contributing to negative physical and mental health outcomes. Friendships developed or maintained in emerging adulthood can set the stage for social support and emotional well-being that individuals experience throughout their lifespan. Understanding the social and psychological mechanisms related to developing and maintaining these social connections may provide insight into solutions for many social problems. Introverted individuals tend to have fewer social contacts due to having a lower threshold for the energy required to fuel social interactions, impacting the development and maintenance of friendships. This study clarifies how trait introversion contributes to friendship intimacy, which may affect the strength and longevity of these important interpersonal relationships. Responses from 519 college-aged women from large southeastern university in the United States to the Friendship Qualities Scale, Emotional Self-Disclosure Scale, and the Aloof-Introverted subscale of the IPIP measure were analyzed. Results indicated that introversion had a significant negative correlation with both friendship qualities and emotional self-disclosure. Thus, introverts reported reduced levels of overall friendship intimacy. The current study offers a theoretical framework to shed light on factors contributing to the epidemic of loneliness among young adults. Consequently, we may gain insight into mitigating this issue by examining how individual characteristics impact interpersonal behaviors, resulting in diminished social and emotional connections.
A Fast Friends procedure was created years ago as a method to generate closeness between people interacting for the first time and to provide an experimental procedure to test hypotheses about factors that may lead to initial closeness. In their original study, Aron et al. (1997) validated their closeness-generating task by comparing the degree of interpersonal closeness it generated versus that by a small-talk task. Few subsequent studies, however, have tested the validity of the closeness task by comparing the affiliative outcomes resulting from it with that from other activities. To further examine its validity, this study involved zero-history dyads randomly assigned to become acquainted through either Aron et al.’s closeness-inducing task, Aron et al.’s small-talk task, or an unstructured getting-acquainted task. The dyads were then compared on the closeness they experienced as well as on several other affiliative outcomes. In support of the validity of the closeness-inducing task, the task generated more closeness and other positive outcomes, relative especially to the small-talk task. A second manipulation in the study was the mode of communication (video-chat vs. face-to-face). No significant differences in outcomes (e.g., closeness, liking) were found based on mode of communication. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the closeness task (relative to the other tasks) for generating closeness and other affiliative outcomes was not moderated by the mode of communication.
Interdependence, Interaction, and Close Relationships - edited by Laura V. Machia June 2020
Cambridge Core - Social Psychology - Interdependence, Interaction, and Close Relationships - edited by Laura V. Machia
The focus of this chapter is on cognitive interventions for adolescents with social anxiety disorder (SAD). The chapter identifies the important aspects of clinical assessments that inform a comprehensive cognitive intervention approach and provide a detailed description of interventions that target cognitions and/or cognitive processes. This description includes both cognitive and cognitive behavioural interventions. Finally, we will present a session-by-session outline of a psychosocial intervention for an adolescent male with SAD.
The influence of social relationships on human development and behavior is receiving increased attention from psychologists, who are central contributors to the rapidly developing multidisciplinary field of relationship science. In this article, the authors selectively review some of the significant strides that have been made toward understanding the effects of relationships on development and behavior and the processes by which relationships exert their influence on these, with the purpose of highlighting important questions that remain to be answered, controversial issues that need to be resolved, and potentially profitable paths for future inquiry. The authors' thesis is that important advances in psychological knowledge will be achieved from concerted investigation of the relationship context in which most important human behaviors are developed and displayed.
Self-focused attention has been linked to social anxiety and poor social performance, but the causal direction of this relationship has not been established. For this study, focus of attention was manipulated during a speech task, conducted in pairs for 38 individuals with generalized social phobia. Results indicated that intensifying self-focused attention increased anticipated anxiety and anxious appearance, regardless of whether the individual was giving a speech or passively standing before the audience. The self-focus manipulation also increased self-reported anxiety during the task, but only for individuals assigned to a passive role. Contrary to expectation, self-focused attention did not affect any measure of social performance. These results indicate that self-focused attention may play a causal role in exacerbating social anxiety.
Nonclinic socially anxious individuals, clinic socially anxious patients, and nonsocially anxious subjects were assessed for changes in patterns of physiological reactivity and cognitions across three interpersonal tasks. The clinic and nonclinic samples of socially anxious subjects differed significantly from the nonsocially anxious subjects in level of physiological reactivity and type of cognition. There were no significant differences between the two anxious groups. The results indicate that both thoughts and physiological reactivity were influenced by situational parameters. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of situational impact in assessments of behavior in socially anxious individuals and the comparison of subjects selected on the basis of performance on various social anxiety inventories to patients who seek treatment in an anxiety disorders clinic.
Using outpatients with anxiety and mood disorders (N = 350), the authors tested several models of the structural relationships of dimensions of key features of selected emotional disorders and dimensions of the tripartite model of anxiety and depression. Results supported the discriminant validity of the 5 symptom domains examined (mood disorders; generalized anxiety disorder, GAD; panic disorder; obsessive-compulsive disorder; social phobia). Of various structural models evaluated, the best fitting involved a structure consistent with the tripartite model (e.g., the higher order factors, negative affect and positive affect, influenced emotional disorder factors in the expected manner). The latent factor, GAD, influenced the latent factor, autonomic arousal, in a direction consistent with recent laboratory findings (autonomic suppression); Findings are discussed in the context of the growing literature on higher order trait dimensions (e.g., negative affect) that may be of considerable importance to the understanding of the pathogenesis, course, and co-occurrence of emotional disorders.
Impression management, the process by which people control the impressions others form of them, plays an important role in interpersonal behavior. This article presents a 2-component model within which the literature regarding impression management is reviewed. This model conceptualizes impression management as being composed of 2 discrete processes. The 1st involves impression motivation—the degree to which people are motivated to control how others see them. Impression motivation is conceptualized as a function of 3 factors: the goal-relevance of the impressions one creates, the value of desired outcomes, and the discrepancy between current and desired images. The 2nd component involves impression construction. Five factors appear to determine the kinds of impressions people try to construct: the self-concept, desired and undesired identity images, role constraints, target's values, and current social image. The 2-component model provides coherence to the literature in the area, addresses controversial issues, and supplies a framework for future research regarding impression management.
Recent research among adolescents has found a positive association between private self-consciousness and peer self-disclosure, and a negative association between such disclosure and loneliness. High school students (N=207) who had participated in an earlier study (Franzoi and Davis, in press) were contacted 1 year later, and the same variables were again assessed. Subjects completed a questionnaire on biographical, social, and psychological information. Standard regression analyses were performed on data from measures of private self-consciousness, peer self-disclosure, and loneliness. The results indicated that greater private self-consciousness was significantly associated with greater self-disclosure to peers; and that self-disclosure to peers was significantly associated with fewer reported feelings of loneliness. These data replicated findings from the previous study and revealed no evidence that disclosure produces greater private self-consciousness nor any evidence that loneliness reduces disclosure. These findings support the view that self-consciousness produces disclosure, which in turn reduces loneliness. (Author/NRB)
This study investigated 3 broad classes of individual-differences variables (job-search motives, competencies, and constraints) as predictors of job-search intensity among 292 unemployed job seekers. Also assessed was the relationship between job-search intensity and reemployment success in a longitudinal context. Results show significant relationships between the predictors employment commitment, financial hardship, job-search self-efficacy, and motivation control and the outcome job-search intensity. Support was not found for a relationship between perceived job-search constraints and job-search intensity. Motivation control was highlighted as the only lagged predictor of job-search intensity over time for those who were continuously unemployed. Job-search intensity predicted Time 2 reemployment status for the sample as a whole, but not reemployment quality for those who found jobs over the study's duration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Describes the development of the Relationship Closeness Inventory (RCI), which draws on the conceptualization of closeness as high interdependence between two people's activities proposed by Kelley et al. (1983). The current "closest" relationship of individuals (
N = 241) drawn from the college student population served as the basis for RCI development, with the closest relationship found to encompass several relationship types, including romantic, friend, and family relationships. The development and psychometric properties of the three RCI subscales (Frequency, Diversity, Strength), their scoring, and their combination to form an overall index of closeness are described. The RCI's test–retest reliability is reported and the association between RCI score and the longevity of the relationship is discussed. RCI scores for individuals' closest relationships are contrasted to those of not-close relationships, to a subjective closeness index, and to several measures of relationship affect, including Rubin's (1973) Liking and Loving scales. Finally, the ability of the RCI to predict relationship break up is contrasted to that of the Subjective Closeness Index, an index of the emotional tone of the relationship, and to relationship longevity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study examined whether social anxiety is diminished among women in the company of a group and, if so, whether it is associated with perceptions of anonymity, being distracted, feelings of security, or an expectation that any evaluation will be diffused across the members of the group. Two social scenarios were presented to 61 female undergraduate students: a physique-salient and a general social situation. For the former situation, self-presentational anxiety was less pronounced in a group of female friends and a mixed group of male and female friends than when alone or in a group of male friends. For the general social situation, in comparison with being alone, being in a group of female friends, being in a group of male friends, and being in a mixed group of male and female friends were associated with less social anxiety. Diffusion of evaluation and perceptions of security were most strongly associated with the reduction in social anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In 2 studies, the Inclusion of Other in the Self (IOS) Scale, a single-item, pictorial measure of closeness, demonstrated alternate-form and test–retest reliability; convergent validity with the Relationship Closeness Inventory (E. Berscheid et al, 1989), the R. J. Sternberg (1988) Intimacy Scale, and other measures; discriminant validity; minimal social desirability correlations; and predictive validity for whether romantic relationships were intact 3 mo later. Also identified and cross-validated were (1) a 2-factor closeness model (Feeling Close and Behaving Close) and (2) longevity–closeness correlations that were small for women vs moderately positive for men. Five supplementary studies showed convergent and construct validity with marital satisfaction and commitment and with a reaction-time (RT)-based cognitive measure of closeness in married couples; and with intimacy and attraction measures in stranger dyads following laboratory closeness-generating tasks. In 3 final studies most Ss interpreted IOS Scale diagrams as depicting interconnectedness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The psychometric adequacy of the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS; R. P. Mattick & J. C. Clark, 1989), a measure of social interaction anxiety, and the Social Phobia Scale (SPS; R. P. Mattick & J. C. Clark, 1989), a measure of anxiety while being observed by others, was evaluated in anxious patients and normal controls. Social phobia patients scored higher on both scales and were more likely to be identified as having social phobia than other anxious patients (except for agoraphobic patients on the SPS) or controls. Clinician-rated severity of social phobia was moderately related to SIAS and SPS scores. Additional diagnoses of mood or panic disorder did not affect SIAS or SPS scores among social phobia patients, but an additional diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder was associated with SIAS scores. Number of reported feared social interaction situations was more highly correlated with scores on the SIAS, whereas number of reported feared performance situations was more highly correlated with scores on the SPS. These scales appear to be useful in screening, designing individualized treatments, and evaluating the outcomes of treatments for social phobia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Recent efforts to resolve the debate regarding the consistency of social behavior are critically analyzed and reviewed in the light of new data from 63 college students. Even with reliable measures, based on multiple behavior observations aggregated over occasions, mean cross-situational consistency coefficients were of modest magnitude; in contrast, impressive temporal stability was found. Although aggregation of measures over occasions is a useful step in establishing reliability, aggregation of measures over situations bypasses rather than resolves the problem of cross-situational consistency. Congruent with a cognitive prototype approach, it is proposed and demonstrated that the judgment of trait consistency is strongly related to the temporal stability of highly prototypic behaviors. In contrast, the global impression of consistency may not be strongly related to highly generalized cross-situational consistency, even in prototypic behaviors. Thus, the perception and organization of personality consistencies seem to depend more on the temporal stability of key features than on the observation of cross-situational behavioral consistency, and the former may be easily interpreted as if it were the latter. (65 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Research on relationships between anxiety and depression has proceeded at a rapid pace since the 1980s. The similarities and differences between these two conditions, as well as many of the important features of the comorbidity of these disorders, are well understood. The genotypic structure of anxiety and depression is also fairly well documented. Generalized anxiety and ma-jor depression share a common genetic diathesis, but the anxiety disorders themselves are genetically hetergeneous. Sophisticated phenotypic models have also emerged, with data converging on an integrative hierarchical model of mood and anxiety disorders in which each individual syndrome contains both a common and a unique component. Finally, considerable progress has been made in understanding cognitive aspects of these disor-ders. This work has focused on both the cognitive content of anxiety and de-pression and on the effects that anxiety and depression have on information processing for mood-congruent material.
Twenty-eight subjects meeting Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (rev. 3rd ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1987) criteria for social phobia and without a comorbid affective disorder and 33 nonclinical controls were asked to present a brief, impromptu speech to a small audience. Speakers themselves, as well as members of the audience, rated each speaker on a public speaking questionnaire that included both specific items (e.g., voice shook) and global items (e.g., appeared confident). For global items, no significant difference was indicated between the two groups on observers' ratings of public speaking performance. However, social phobics rated their own performance worse than did nonclinical controls, and there was a significantly greater discrepancy between self and other ratings for social phobics than controls. Fear of negative evaluation was the only significant predictor of the self-other discrepancy on global items.
Compared the level of physiological reactivity and frequency of negative cognitions in 26 nonclinic, socially anxious (SA) Ss (mean age 20.8 yrs), 17 clinic SA patients (mean age 40.8 yrs), and 26 nonsocially anxious (NSA) Ss (mean age 22.0 yrs) to investigate the consistency of cognitive and physiological reactivity in the assessment of social anxiety. A social interaction self-statement test served as the cognitive measure. Physiological reactivity was monitored continuously throughout Ss' completion of the following behavioral tasks: an unstructured interpersonal interaction with an opposite-sex confederate, a similar interaction with a same-sex confederate, and an impromptu talk on a topic selected by the S. The clinic and nonclinic samples of SA Ss differed significantly from the NSA Ss in level of physiological reactivity and type of cognition. There were no significant differences between the 2 anxious groups. The results indicate that both thoughts and physiological reactivity were influenced by situational parameters. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Written for clients, this workbook teaches that social anxiety is a normal part of life, but it can sometimes have a negative impact. The important question is not whether someone experiences social anxiety but to what degree and how often. The term social anxiety disorder describes the distress and interference that comes along with severe social anxiety. Information is presented on the nature of social anxiety, empirically supported cognitive–behavioral techniques used to treat it, how to best implement these techniques, and how to deal with the problems that arise during treatment. The attempt is to offer a complete treatment that is informed by individual case conceptualization within an evidence-based practice framework. This third edition includes case examples that represent diverse clients across race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
The comorbidity of current and lifetime DSM-IV anxiety and mood disorders was examined in 1,127 outpatients who were assessed with the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-IV :Lifetime version (ADIS-IV-L). The current and lifetime prevalence of additional Axis I disorders in principal anxiety and mood disorders was found to be 57% and 81%, respectively. The principal diagnostic categories associated with the highest comorbidity rates were mood disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). A high rate of lifetime comorbidity was found between the anxiety and mood disorders; the lifetime association with mood disorders was particularly strong for PTSD, GAD, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and social phobia. The findings are discussed in regard to their implications for the classification of emotional disorders.
Impression management, the process by which people control the impressions others form of them, plays an important role in interpersonal behavior. This article presents a 2-component model within which the literature regarding impression management is reviewed. This model conceptualizes impression management as being composed of 2 discrete processes. The 1st involves impression motivation-the degree to which people are motivated to control how others see them. Impression motivation is conceptualized as a function of 3 factors: the goal-relevance of the impressions one creates, the value of desired outcomes, and the discrepancy between current and desired images. The 2nd component involves impression construction. Five factors appear to determine the kinds of impressions people try to construct: the self-concept, desired and undesired identity images, role constraints, target's values, and current social image. The 2-component model provides coherence to the literature in the area, addresses controversial issues, and supplies a framework for future research regarding impression management.
Previous research has identified nonobvious, cognitive indexes of including other in the self (self-other overlap) that differentiate close from nonclose relationships. These indexes include a reaction time measure and a measure focusing on attributional perspective. This study demonstrated for the first time that these cognitive indices differentiated among romantic relationships of varying degrees of closeness, suggesting that self-other overlap is not an either-or phenomenon. Further, the degree of self-other overlap was associated with subjective feelings of closeness, but little if at all with amount and diversity of interaction, suggesting that cognitive self-other overlap is not a direct product of behavioral interaction. Finally, these indexes predicted relationship maintenance and other variables over 3 months and correlated with self-reports of love, suggesting a broad linkage of cognitive self-other overlap to other aspects of relational experience.
In this theoretical paper, it is argued that social anxiety arises from the activation of an evolved mechanism for dealing with intra-species (conspecific) threat, a mechanism which has played a vital role in the evolution of social groups. A model is developed showing how this “agonic” mode of defense, working through the psychological systems of appraisal and coping, leads the socially anxious to perceive others as hostile dominants, to fear negative evaluation from them and to respond, at one level of the disorder, by appeasement and submissive behavior, and at a more severe level of the disorder, by more primitive actions such as escape or avoidance. A further theme put forward is that the socially anxious person appears unable to recruit another evolved mechanism for social relating called the “hedonic” mode, in which social groups are structured in terms of cooperation, equality, and mutual support. Some therapeutic implications of these concepts are explored.
A flood of new studies explores people's subjective well-being (SWB) Frequent positive affect, infrequent negative affect, and a global sense of satisfaction with life define high SWB These studies reveal that happiness and life satisfaction are similarly available to the young and the old, women and men, blacks and whites, the rich and the working-class Better clues to well-being come from knowing about a person's traits, close relationships, work experiences, culture, and religiosity We present the elements of an appraisal-based theory of happiness that recognizes the importance of adaptation, cultural world-view, and personal goals
Building on prior work showing that the effects of power depend on the goals that people associate with power (Chen, Lee-Chai, & Bargh, 2001), the present research examined the goals powerholders pursue as a function of their self-construal and gender. An independent self-construal, or a view of the self as separate from others, is associated with the promotion of one's own goals, while an interdependent self-construal, or a view of the self as interconnected with others, entails a focus on others' goals. Because power affords the opportunity to pursue one's current goals, when power is coupled with an independent self-construal, self-interest goals are likely to be enhanced, whereas power combined with an interdependent self-construal should heighten other-oriented goals. In light of research suggesting gender differences in self-construals (e.g., Cross & Madson, 1997a), it was hypothesized that men and women would experience particular combinations of power and self-construals differently, resulting in distinct power–goal effects. Participants read a vignette describing a situation in which their own interests were pitted against another person's interests. The results showed that different combinations of power and self-construals—and the sense of independence or interdependence associated with them—led men and women to pursue similar goals in response to the vignette situation. Overall, these findings represent a first step in examining the joint role of self-construals and gender in determining the effects of power.
This research explored higher and lower socially anxious individuals' impressions of homogeneous and heterogeneous discussion groups. Based upon an averaging–summation analysis, it was expected that subjects would average their impressions and resultant anxiety in a heterogeneous group. This result was obtained; individuals anticipated experiencing less anxiety in a group composed of 1 faculty and 3 high school students than in a group composed of a single high status discussant. Furthermore, the responses of high and low socially anxious individuals to heterogeneous groups differed. These results suggest that high and low socially anxious individuals may differ in their focus of attention in small groups, resulting in a different weighting of status variables.
Recent efforts to resolve the debate regarding the consistency of social behavior are critically analyzed and reviewed in the light of new data. Even with reliable measures, based on multiple behavior observations aggregated over occasions, mean cross-situational consistency coefficients were of modest magnitude; in contrast, impressive temporal stability was found. Although aggregation of measures over occasions is a useful step in establishing reliability, aggregation of measures over situations bypasses rather than resolves the problem of cross-situational consistency. The Bem-Funder (1978) template-matching approach did not enhance the search for cross-situational consistency either in their original data or in an extended replication presented here. The Bern-Allen (1974) moderator-variable approach also was not found to yield greater cross-situational consistency in the behavior of "some of the people some of the time" either in their original data or in the present study of conscientiousness. Congruent with a cognitive prototype approach, it was proposed and demonstrated that the judgment of trait consistency is strongly related to the temporal stability of highly prototypic behaviors. In contrast, the global impression of consistency may not be strongly related to highly generalized cross-situational consistency, even in prototypic behaviors. Thus, the perception and organization of personality consistencies seems to depend more on the temporal stability of key features than on the observation of cross-situational behavioral consistency, and the former may be easily interpreted as if it were the latter.
A practical methodology is presented for creating closeness in an experimental context. Whether or not an individual is in a relationship, particular pairings of individuals in the relationship, and circumstances of relationship development become manipulated variables. Over a 45-min period subject pairs carry out self-disclosure and relationship-building tasks that gradually escalate in intensity. Study 1 found greater postinteraction closeness with these tasks versus comparable small-talk tasks. Studies 2 and 3 found no significant closeness effects, inspite of adequate power, for (a) whether pairs were matched for nondisagreement on important attitudes, (b) whether pairs were led to expect mutual liking, or (c) whether getting close was made an explicit goal. These studies also illustrated applications for addressing theoretical issues, yielding provocative tentative findings relating to attachment style and introversion/extraversion.
Social phobia has become a focus of increased research since its inclusion in DSM-III. However, assessment of social phobia has remained an underdeveloped area, especially self-report assessment. Clinical researchers have relied on measures that were developed on college populations, and these measures may not provide sufficient coverage of the range of situations feared by social phobic individuals. There is a need for additional instruments that consider differences in the types of situations (social interaction vs. situations involving observation by others) that may be feared by social phobics and between subgroups of social phobic patients. This study provides validational data on two instruments developed by Mattick and Clarke (1989): the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS), a measure of anxiety in social interactional situations, and the Social Phobia Scale (SPS), a measure of anxiety in situations involving observation by others. These data support the use of the SIAS and SPS in the assessment of individuals with social phobia.
The development and validation of the Social Phobia Scale (SPS) and the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS) two companion measures for assessing social phobia fears is described. The SPS assesses fears of being scrutinised during routine activities (eating, drinking, writing, etc.), while the SIAS assesses fears of more general social interaction, the scales corresponding to the DSM-III-R descriptions of Social Phobia—Circumscribed and Generalised types, respectively. Both scales were shown to possess high levels of internal consistency and test–retest reliability. They discriminated between social phobia, agoraphobia and simple phobia samples, and between social phobia and normal samples. The scales correlated well with established measures of social anxiety, but were found to have low or non-significant (partial) correlations with established measures of depression, state and trait anxiety, locus of control, and social desirability. The scales were found to change with treatment and to remain stable in the face of no-treatment. It appears that these scales are valid, useful, and easily scored measures for clinical and research applications, and that they represent an improvement over existing measures of social phobia.
This study sought to replicate and extend a previous study in which social anxiety was associated with poorer recall of the details of a social interaction as well as to test various hypotheses derived from Trower and Gilbert's (1989) psychobiological/ethological theory of social anxiety. Socially anxious and nonanxious undergraduate students participated in a heterosocial conversation with a confederate under the observation of a second subject. Consistent with the previous study, there was some evidence that social anxiety was associated with poorer recall of interaction details for women. Social anxiety and recall were unrelated for men. Men demonstrated poorer recall than women overall. The hypotheses derived from Trower and Gilbert's theory were largely supported, suggesting socially anxious individuals view social interactions as competitive endeavors in which they are ill equipped to challenge the other person. Rather, they adopt self-effacing strategies, but still doubt their success. Finally, the judgments of nonanxious individuals about their impact on others appeared to be positively biased. Implications for cognitive theories of social anxiety are discussed.
Three potential mediators of the relationship between social anxiety and social rejection were examined. Undergraduate women (N= 84) participated in a self-disclosure reciprocity task during which trained observers and experimental confederates rated subjects' anxiety-related behaviors, self-disclosure, and similarity to their partner. Partner acceptance or rejection of subjects was also assessed. Judgments of similarity mediated the social anxietysocial rejection relationship. Self-disclosure and overt signs of anxiety served as cues on which others based their judgments of similarity. Overall, these results suggested that multiple processes influence the social rejection of socially anxious people.Copyright 1998 Academic Press.
There are 2 broad aims in writing this book. The first is to produce a comprehensive practical text of cognitive therapy of anxiety disorders. In order for a treatment guide to be of most value it should offer a detailed description of not only what to do in treatment but also an account of how to do it. This book does both. The book is illustrated throughout with case examples and examples of therapeutic dialogues. All of the material used is based on actual cases.
The second aim of this work is to present a pure approach to cognitive therapy that makes a significant contribution to advancing theory and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Randomly paired same-sex strangers (N ¼ 96) participated in a series of structured interactions systematically manipulated to either create or not create a shared humorous experience. They then completed measures of feelings of closeness to their interaction partner. Consistent with hypotheses derived from personal relationships and humor theories, there was a significant effect of humor on closeness. This effect was significantly partially mediated by self-expansion and distraction from the discomfort of the first encounter, but not by self-disclosure/ acceptance. The effect was significantly moderated by trait sense of humor and marginally moderated by anxious attachment style (such that the effect was greater for those high in trait sense of humor and high in anxious attachment). A predicted moderation by avoidant attachment was not significant.
Women high and low in social self-efficacy participated in a social interaction either under conditions of heightened public self-awareness or in a control condition. The self-awareness manipulation increased self-focused attention and self-evaluation, but only among low-efficacy subjects. Low-efficacy subjects withdrew from the interaction more quickly than did high-efficacy subjects, but only when self-awareness was heightened. Both groups of low-efficacy subjects believed their partners would not like them, and the partners did indeed like these subjects less than the high-efficacy women. These results suggest that low-efficacy women are distinguished by a number of cognitive factors, even in the absence of self-directed attention. Faced with social scrutiny, these individuals engage in a perservative self-evaluation process, which ultimately leads to social withdrawal. The results are interpreted from the perspective of Ingram's (1990) interaction model of self-directed attention.
This study investigated the hypothesis that differences in self-efficacy in opposite-sex interactions are associated with differences in the cognitive schemata employed in the perception of social situations. Forty-five male undergraduates sorted opposite-sex and same-sex interaction descriptions on the basis of similarity and rated them on several adjective scales. Multidimensional scaling indicated two dimensions of meaning used in sorting each set of situations. For opposite-sex situations, subjects of low and medium heterosocial self-efficacy utilized an intimacy dimension more and a risk of conflict dimension less than did high self-efficacy subjects. Perceived similarities among the same-sex interactions were based to a large degree on the risk of conflict involved for subjects of low and medium heterosocial self-efficacy, but not for the high self-efficacy group. All subject groups also utilized an intensity of feelings dimension. Compared to high efficacy subjects, low and medium efficacy subjects rated the opposite-sex situations as, on the average, more unpleasant, unfamiliar, and risky, and themselves as having less knowledge of how to behave, and experiencing more feelings of discomfort. The results suggest that levels of perceived efficacy in dating-related situations of college men are related to selective attention to different aspects of the meaning of heterosexual interactions, and that these differences also reflect a broader pattern of differences in social cognition. Multidimensional scaling appears to be a useful methodology for examining differences in social cognition as a function of personality differences, and may have useful clinical applications.
Socially anxious and nonanxious college students provided detailed personal information and were led to believe that they would soon interact with a person of the opposite sex who was either similar or dissimilar to them in terms of background, experience, and other attributes. In accord with the social psychological literature, nonanxious students greatly preferred similar to dissimilar partners. Socially anxious students showed no difference between their ratings of similar and dissimilar partners and assigned much less extreme ratings to both partners than did nonanxious subjects. Subjects' predictions about partners' likely anxiety and how partners would evaluate subjects' anxiety also differed according to subjects' anxiety levels, but these differences did not parallel attraction scores. Results are compared with other research on social anxiety and contrasted to past research on social anxiety, attitude similarity, and attraction. Directions for future research are addressed, and questions about the validity of the thought-listing technique are discussed.
Documented with 2 experiments a phenomenon of duration neglect in people's global evaluations of past affective experiences. In Study 1, 32 Ss viewed aversive film clips and pleasant film clips that varied in duration and intensity. Ss provided real-time ratings of affect during each clip and global evaluations of each clip when it was over. In Study 2, 96 Ss viewed these same clips and later ranked them by their contribution to an overall experience of pleasantness (or unpleasantness). Experimental Ss ranked the films from memory; control Ss were informed of the ranking task in advance and encouraged to make evaluations on-line. Effects of film duration on retropsective evaluations were small, entirely explained by changes in real-time affects and further reduced when made from memory. Retrospective evaluations appear to be determined by a weighing average of "snapshots" of the actual affective experiences, as if duration did not matter.
This study builds on an earlier investigation of the causal relations that exist among loneliness, self-disclosure, and private self-consciousness (Franzoi & Davis, 1985). Using structural equation techniques and a longitudinal (Year 1-Year 2) design, the present investigation tested a theoretical model that links these variables. Participants were 406 high school students. As in the previous study, results generally indicated a good fit between the theoretical model and the observed relations. In particular, however, this investigation provided new evidence concerning two alternative interpretations of the original Franzoi and Davis study. First, this study supports the original hypothesis that private self-consciousness leads to greater self-disclosure to peers, but it offers no support for the alternative view that such disclosure in turn increases private self-consciousness. Second, this investigation is somewhat equivocal with respect to the original hypothesis that greater self-disclosure reduces loneliness. Both this hypothesis and the alternative view that greater loneliness reduces self-disclosure, receive some support from the data in this study. Finally, the difficulty in obtaining significant longitudinal paths (from Year 1 to Year 2) suggests that the time lags in the variables' effects on one another are relatively short rather than long.
32 generalized social phobic outpatients and 32 matched nonclinical control subjects participated in a dyadic 'getting acquainted' interaction with an experimental assistant who engaged in either positive or negative social behavior. The accuracy of social phobics' and control subjects' perceptions of themselves and their partners were compared in the two conditions. Relative to observers' ratings, the social phobics displayed a negative bias in their appraisals of some, but not all, aspects of their social performance. These results suggested that social phobics may have particular difficulty gauging the nonverbal aspects of their social behavior. The phobics discounted their social competence to the same extent in the positive interaction, where their behavior was more skillful, as in the negative interaction. The social phobics were also less accurate than nonclinical controls in their appraisals of their partners, however, these phobic subjects displayed a positive bias when appraising their partner's performance.