The Physiology and Psychology of Anxiety

Social situations were an important part of human evolutionary history, so the ability to identify, establish and maintain positive social connections as well as avoiding negative and possibly dangerous situations and individuals is an evolutionary psychological mechanism found through human history and culture. In evolutionary history false negatives, or failing to detect danger when it is present is far more detrimental than false positive, or detecting threats when there is none. Any system that is designed to detect and avoid dangerous situations benefits from being overly sensitive at times. Individuals who are socially anxious have a low threshold for the detection of danger (Mateson, Brilot, & Nettle, 2011). With these mechanism primed to be hyper-sensitive to cues of social evaluation, it is understandable why phobias such as public speaking rank highly. This study aims to identify factors relating to the activation of social anxiety producing mechanism and documents a number of the physiological symptoms that accompany social phobias. In an evolutionary view of social phobias, there must have been circumstances in which it was beneficial to be aware of others in the environment for a number of reasons: mate selection, avoidance of hostile forces, and establishing and maintaining group membership. These types of situations would be the ideal time and place for the activation of the mechanisms relating to social phobias. Those having a “misfiring” mechanism, or scoring high on a social anxiety scale, would have higher responses to the social scenarios