BACKGROUND Social anxiety is highly prevalent among people with psychosis and linked with significant social disability and poorer prognosis. Although cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) has shown to be effective for the treatment of social anxiety in non-psychotic populations, there is a lack of evidence on the clinical effectiveness of CBT for the treatment of social anxiety when this is co-m...

Social anxiety--the fear of social embarrassment and negative evaluation by others--ranks among people's worst fears, and it is often thought to impair task performance. We investigated the neurocognitive processes through which trait social anxiety relates to task performance, proposing a model of the joint contributions of reactive control, theoretically associated with conflict monitoring an...

BACKGROUND Social anxiety disorder (also known as social phobia) is characterized by extreme fear, avoidance, or both of one or more social or performance situations, such as making a presentation, meeting new people, or eating in front of others. This condition is common, with a lifetime prevalence of up to 13%, and one third of affected persons have major dysfunction. METHODS The English-la...

Recent literature has emphasized the possible benefits to mindfulness practice. Evidence for a negative relation between mindfulness and pathology has come from validity studies of several newly developed, self-report mindfulness questionnaires. Results illustrate a consistent negative relation between levels of self-report mindfulness and symptoms of depression, negative affect, and anxiety am...

Current cognitive models stress the importance of negative self-perceptions in maintaining social anxiety, but focus predominantly on content rather than structure. Two studies examine the role of self-structure (self-organisation, self-complexity, and self-concept clarity) in social anxiety. In study one, self-organisation and self-concept clarity were correlated with social anxiety, and a ste...

This study tested an affect-specific explanation for the Asian and White American differences in depression and social anxiety. Construal of the self as independent or interdependent in relation to others (H. R. Markus & S. Kitayama, 1991) was hypothesized to be 1 possible way in which culture may be expressed in individuals' psychological functioning, which in turn was hypothesized to be linke...

Strategies that children use for coping with stressors are known to be related to emotional adjustment, but not enough is understood about specific links with social anxiety and depression. The present investigation tested differentiated associations of social anxiety and depression with specific types of coping strategies, and evaluated the direction of these associations over time. In Study 1...

Despite predictions following from cognitive theories of anxiety, evidence for memory biases in social anxiety has been mixed. This study extends previous research by using stimuli relevant to participants' concerns and allowing time for post-event processing. Participants high (n=42) or low (n=39) in social anxiety symptoms gave speeches and received standardized feedback on their and a confed...

We examined how social anxiety is related to appraisals for various disinhibited behaviors and sought to identify potential subgroups of socially anxious people. College students completed trait measures and appraised disinhibited behaviors on their potential for threat, opportunity to satisfy curiosity, and ability to enhance social status. Three months later, participants were asked to report...

Social anxiety is marked by viewing social interactions as competitive, hypervigilance to signs of social threat, and avoidance of interactions that may result in social rejection. Therefore, social anxiety should relate to: (1) greater hostile feelings toward others, (2) heightened perceptions of hostility in others, and (3) relatively low levels of violence and aggression. To date, however, l...