Post-event processing in social anxiety

The current thesis examined the role of post-event processing (PEP; Clark & Wells, 1995), the act of engaging in a detailed and negatively-biased review of a prior social event, in the maintenance of social anxiety. The six studies presented had three major goals: (i) to outline the cognitive contents of PEP (Study 1), (ii) to explicate the cognitive causes of PEP (Studies 1-3), and (iii) to investigate the consequences of engaging in this process (Studies 4 and 5). Study 1 found that individuals higher in social anxiety were more likely to experience negative thoughts about the self and social performance during PEP, than individuals lower in social anxiety. Study 1 also revealed that a unique predictor of PEP following a brief speech was the frequency with which negative assumptions came to mind during that speech. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that negative self-imagery and negative somatic feedback during a brief speech, respectively, led to increases in negative affect, deficits in perceived performance, increases in negative cognitions, and increases in PEP in both high and low socially anxious individuals. These negative effects were mediated by increases in self-focused attention. In Study 4, instructions to engage in PEP after a brief speech elicited constructive effects such as increased willingness to give a second speech, improvements in self-perceived speech quality, and reductions in negative performance perceptions in high and low socially anxious participants. These helpful effects most likely emerged because specific characteristics of the PEP manipulation inadvertently encouraged concrete processing of the initial speech. In Study 5, PEP instructions were modified to enhance to abstract-evaluative processing of negative self-aspects. Results revealed that among high but not low socially anxious individuals, engaging in PEP as opposed to distraction increased negative affect, negative self-beliefs, and interpretive biases. The current thesis provides an important extension to the extant literature by demonstrating that (i) PEP is primarily dominated by cognitions reflecting discrepancies between the actual and ought self, (ii) PEP is triggered by cognitive variables that enhance perceptions of social failure, and (iii) engaging in PEP enhances negative feelings, strengthens self-doubts, maintains perceived discrepancies between the self and desired social standards, and ultimately contributes to the maintenance of social anxiety