Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology J97S, Vol.- 43, No. 3, 429
Social Anxiety and the Evaluation of Negative Interpersonal Feedback Ronald E. Smith and Irwin G. Sarason University of Washington The socially anxious person is viewed as being highly motivated to avoid the disapproval of others and as being attentive to evaluative interpersonal cues. The present study deals with the effects of social anxiety on perception of and responses to negatively toned interpersonal : feedback. On the basis of their responses on the 30-item Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (Watson & Friend, 1969), 104 male and 107 female college students were divided into low (0-7), moderate (8-16), and high (17-30) social anxiety groups. Six weeks later, the subjects participated in a role-playing experiment described to them as a measure of how much insight they had into the way they would respond in a novel social situation. They were asked to role play themselves in an impression formation experiment in which they had interacted with another person who had then rated them on 10 7-point bipolar adjective scales (e.g., likable-unlikable). The subjects were presented with an evaluation form on which 7 of the 10 scales were rated toward the negative pole, and they were asked to imagine that they had received this evaluation from the other person. The subjects then rated on 9-point scales how favorable they judged the other's evaluation of them to be, how good or badly they would feel about receiving such an evaluation, the likelihood that another person would actually evaluate them in that way, and their willingness to interact with the evaluator in the future. The four dependent variable measures were each subjected to a 3 (anxiety level) X 2 (sex of subject) analysis of variance, and group means were compared by means of multiple-range tests. A significant anxiety effect was obtained on the measures of perceived favorableness of feedback, Reprints and an extended report of this study may be obtained without charge from Ronald E. Smith, Department of Psychology, NI-2S, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195.
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Social Anxiety and the Evaluation of Negative Interpersonal Feedback Ronald E. Smith and Irwin G. Sarason University of Washington The socially anxious person is viewed as being highly motivated to avoid the disapproval of others and as being attentive to evaluative interpersonal cues. The present study deals with the effects of social anxiety on perception of and responses to negatively toned interpersonal : feedback. On the basis of their responses on the 30-item Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (Watson & Friend, 1969), 104 male and 107 female college students were divided into low (0-7), moderate (8-16), and high (17-30) social anxiety groups. Six weeks later, the subjects participated in a role-playing experiment described to them as a measure of how much insight they had into the way they would respond in a novel social situation. They were asked to role play themselves in an impression formation experiment in which they had interacted with another person who had then rated them on 10 7-point bipolar adjective scales (e.g., likable-unlikable). The subjects were presented with an evaluation form on which 7 of the 10 scales were rated toward the negative pole, and they were asked to imagine that they had received this evaluation from the other person. The subjects then rated on 9-point scales how favorable they judged the other's evaluation of them to be, how good or badly they would feel about receiving such an evaluation, the likelihood that another person would actually evaluate them in that way, and their willingness to interact with the evaluator in the future. The four dependent variable measures were each subjected to a 3 (anxiety level) X 2 (sex of subject) analysis of variance, and group means were compared by means of multiple-range tests. A significant anxiety effect was obtained on the measures of perceived favorableness of feedback, Reprints and an extended report of this study may be obtained without charge from Ronald E. Smith, Department of Psychology, NI-2S, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195.
F(2,205) =4.75, />
