Abstract
At its core, Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is an interpersonal disorder characterized by a fear of negative evaluation (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Prior work has revealed a number of maladaptive interpersonal behaviors associated with social anxiety (Papsdorf & Alden, 1998; Meleshko & Alden, 1993), which may exacerbate the negative consequences of SAD. Borrowing from work in depression, this study investigated the role of self-verification in explaining these counterproductive interpersonal behaviors associated with SAD. One hundred twenty students were randomized to receive one of three types of feedback ostensibly from a “partner”: positive/accepting feedback, balanced/neutral feedback, or negative/rejecting feedback. To understand the effects of feedback on participants’ willingness to engage in prosocial/affiliative behaviors, a number of behavioral and behavioroid measures were collected. In addition, social anxiety measures (both self-report and clinician-rated) were collected to understand how social anxiety moderated responses to feedback. After controlling for depression and initial behavioral tendencies, results revealed less prosocial and affiliative behavior in socially anxious participants following acceptance but not neutral or rejecting feedback and more prosocial behavior in non-anxious participants following rejecting but not neutral or accepting feedback. A measure of feedback-seeking revealed more negative feedback-seeking in social anxious participants following acceptance which provided evidence for self-verification as mechanism through which social anxiety exerted its interpersonal influence. Behavioral patterns associated with depression after controlling for social anxiety and initial behavioral tendencies were similar to the findings for social anxiety. The significance of the main findings for understanding social anxiety and improving treatments for SAD as well as the implications of the lack of specificity for social anxiety are discussed.
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