Social Anxiety 1 Submitting to Defeat: Social Anxiety, Dominance Threat, and Decrements in Testosterone

Although theory suggests a link between social anxiety and social dominance, direct empirical evidence for this link is limited. The present experiment tested the hypothesis that socially anxious individuals, particularly men, would respond to a social dominance threat by displaying decrements in their testosterone levels, an endocrinological change that typically reflects pronounced social submission in humans and other animals. Participants were randomly assigned to either win or lose a rigged face-to-face competition with a confederate. Although no zero-order relationship between social anxiety and level of testosterone was observed, socially anxious men who lost the competition displayed a pronounced drop in testosterone. No significant changes were observed in nonanxious men or in women. This research provides novel insight into the nature and consequences of social anxiety, and also illustrates the utility of integrating social psychological theory with endocrinological approaches to psychological science. Social anxiety (SA) plays a major role in regulating – and sometimes dysregulating – many forms of human social interaction. People high in SA perceive a variety of everyday social situations to be threatening and often respond to social situations with exaggerated worry, distress, physiological hyperarousal, and avoidant behavior (Heimberg, Liebowitz, Hope, &amp