The contributions of arousal and self-focused attention to avoidance in social anxiety.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Socially anxious individuals are theorized to avoid social cues and engage in safety behaviors to prevent negative evaluation, which prevents disconfirmation of social fears. Cognitive models propose that this avoidance is driven by (1) self-focused attention (SFA) and (2) physiological arousal. DESIGN: To examine these proposed mechanisms, we compared high socially anxious (HSA; n=29) and low socially anxious (LSA; n=28) participants on a view-time task involving faces. METHOD: Participants engaged in a task in which they viewed socially threatening (i.e., disgust, anger) and nonthreatening (i.e., happy, neutral) faces. RESULTS: Results revealed that HSA participants endorsed gr..