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The current study compared the predicted social and career impact of socially withdrawn and reticent behaviors among participants from Western and East Asian countries. Three hundred sixty-one college students from 5 Western countries and 455 students from 3 East Asian countries read hypothetical vignettes describing socially withdrawn and shy behaviors versus socially outgoing and confident behaviors. Participants then answered questions following each vignette indicating the extent to which they would expect the subject of the vignette to be socially liked and to succeed in their career. Participants also completed measures of their own social anxiety and quality of life. The results indicated significant vignette-by-country interactions in that the difference in perceived social and career impact between shy and outgoing vignettes was smaller among participants from East Asian countries than from Western countries. In addition, significant negative correlations were shown between personal level of shyness and experienced quality of life for participants from both groups of countries, but the size of this relationship was greater for participants from Western than East Asian countries. The results point to the more negative impact of withdrawn and socially reticent behaviors for people from Western countries relative to those from East Asia., (Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

The current study investigated the mechanism through which safety behaviors perpetuate perceived and actual negative social outcomes hypothesized to maintain social anxiety disorder (SAD). Eighty individuals diagnosed with generalized SAD took part in a "getting acquainted" conversation with a trained experimental confederate. Participants were then randomly assigned to either a safety behavior reduction plus exposure condition (SB + EXP) or a graduated exposure (EXP) control condition and completed a 2nd conversation with the same interaction partner. Mediation analyses revealed that participants instructed to reduce their idiosyncratic safety behaviors displayed significantly greater increases in both perceived and actual positive interpersonal outcomes relative to the EXP group. However, whereas the safety behavior manipulation influenced participants' appraisals of their partner's reaction to them through reducing self-judgments about the visibility of anxiety-related behaviors, in reality, the SB + EXP group elicited more positive partner reactions because they displayed a greater increase in social approach behavior. Thus, although both parties recognized positive changes in the social exchange following the safety behavior manipulation, different sources of social information accounted for participant versus partner interpersonal judgments. The current findings point to the potential value of considering both the intra and interpersonal consequences of safety behaviors in SAD., ((c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.)

We report four independent studies that examined the relationship between social interaction anxiety and the tendency to interpret positive social events in a threat-maintaining manner. Study 1 described the development of a scale that measures negative interpretations of positive social events, the interpretation of positive events scale (IPES). Study 2 cross-validated the structure of the IPES and established that social interaction anxiety explained significant variance in negative interpretations of positive social events beyond negative affect in general. Study 3 demonstrated that negative interpretation of positive events was significantly greater in a clinical sample of patients with generalized social anxiety disorder (GSAD) than a matched group of non-anxious community controls. In addition, within the GSAD group, the IPES was associated with negative social predictions following a positive interaction. Finally, study 4 confirmed that negative interpretations of positive social events mediated the relationship between social interaction anxiety and low positive affect.

Patients with generalized social phobia (N = 42) and non-phobic community controls (N = 42) engaged in a social interaction with an experimental assistant whose behavior was used to create either a positive or an ambiguous social environment. Participants then rated their own performance and their partner's behavior. As a group, social phobic patients displayed negatively biased self-judgments, but failed to display biased social interpretations. Among the social phobia group, a social developmental history marked by parental hostility was associated with negative interpretations of partner behavior and a history of parental overprotection was associated with less sensitivity to partner behavior. The results supported cognitive models of social phobia, which implicate negative learning experiences in the development of information processing biases.

Individuals with Generalized Social Phobia (GSP, N = 25) and community controls (N = 26) participated in a social interaction task. They then rated how well they had performed in the situation and assigned weights and valences to the different types of information they used to arrive at this judgment. The GSP group weighed anxiety-related self-information more heavily than did the Control group. In contrast, their conversational partners weighed verbal behavior more heavily. These findings are generally supportive of cognitive models of social phobia and point to the negative interpersonal implications of relying on different social information than others.

Objectives: To examine levels of perfectionism in social phobics and to explore the consequences of perfectionism for such individuals., Design: A between-groups laboratory design was used to provide a level of comparison between phobic and non-phobic individuals in a controlled setting., Method: Participants for the phobic group (N = 28) were recruited from waiting lists for treatment programmes, and matched controls (N = 29) were recruited from community advertisements. Volunteers for the study completed measures of perfectionism (Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale) and then completed a laboratory session in which they were asked to rate others' social standards for them and their own social ability., Results: Social phobic individuals scored higher on socially prescribed perfectionism. Perfectionistic traits were associated with higher standards in social phobics, but not in controls. Finally, social phobia was associated with lowered perceptions of social ability., Conclusions: Although social phobia and socially prescribed perfectionism were intertwined, the two conditions appeared to contribute to negative self-appraisal through different processes. Social phobics who are perfectionistic are likely not only to have low levels of efficacy, but also to feel that others will have high expectations for them in social situations.

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.