Cognitive biases in social anxiety

This thesis examined socially anxious individuals’ biases in anticipatory processing, perspective-taking, self-focused attention, intensifying danger or threat, which may be construed as ‘loomingness’, and metacognitive knowledge or beliefs. Experiment 1 examined the effects of anticipatory processing on a subsequent speech in high and low socially anxious individuals (N = 40). In anticipation, high socially anxious individuals were more anxious and experienced more negative and unhelpful self-images than low socially anxious individuals. They also tended to use the observer perspective more in an anticipated speech, while in an unanticipated speech, they may have been switching between observer and field perspectives. Low socially anxious individuals tended to use the field perspective in both speeches. Experiment 2 explored using a qualitative approach, the phenomenology of anticipatory processing in high socially anxious individuals (N = 11). Thematic analysis of coded interviews revealed seven broad deductive themes: (1) prior preparation; (2) catastrophic thoughts; (3) recollection of past similar social events; (4) impressions; (5) self-images; (6) avoidance of social situations; and (7) physical symptoms of anxiety; and three Inductive themes: (1) bad dreams and nightmares; (2) biased estimates in intensifying threat; and (3) metacognitives. Experiments 3 and 4 used the same sample of volunteers (n = 152) to explore the relationship between looming vulnerability and metacognition, respectively, and social anxiety. In Experiment 3, volunteers completed the Looming Maladaptive Style Questionnaire-Two, which assessed social and physical looming. In Experiment 4, volunteers completed the Thought Control Questionnaire, the Metacognitions Questionnaire-30 (MCQ-30), and the Cognitive Self-Consciousness Scale-Expanded. Experiment 5 used two concepts developed in social psychology, that is, the spotlight effect and the illusion of transparency, to help explain the types of processes that might contribute to the construction of the self as a social object in social anxiety. Participants (N = 60) performed a memory task under either a high or a low social-evaluation condition. Findings provide some support for current cognitive models of social phobia (Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997) and suggest the need for an understanding of both the content of cognition and the different kinds of dynamic, cognitive processing styles, namely, metacognitive and looming, that give the content of cognition its significance or salience.