Social anxiety's impact on affect, curiosity, and social self-efficacy during a high self-focus social threat situation

Upon being exposed to a high self-focus, potentially socially threatening situation, excessively socially anxious (SA) individuals were posited to experience amplified negative emotional states, as well as diminished positive emotional, cognitive, and intimacy-related outcomes. Ninety-one college students engaged in a reciprocal self-disclosure task with a trained confederate. Participants and confederates took turns answering (while a camera was directed at them) and asking questions that gradually increased in personal content. The results indicated that high SA individuals experienced more intense negative affect, less intense positive affect, and poorer social self-efficacy compared to low SA individuals in both conditions. However, differences between high and low SA individuals were larger in the social threat/self-focus condition, and self-focused attention partially accounted for these effects. In terms of specificity, nearly all findings remained after statistically controlling for depressive symptoms. In contrast, social anxiety effects were generally absent on measures of observed behavior and intimacy outcomes. These findings implicate the role of social threat and self-focused attention in contributing to affective and cognitive disturbances among SA individuals.