Social anxiety is strongly affected by attention to, and misinterpretation of, internal bodily states

One question raised by researchers seeking to understand social phobia is why it persists in spite of the fact that socially  anxious individuals are no more likely to receive direct negative feedback in social situations than people who don’t suffer from this affliction. Well, a very compelling explanation is that social phobics are more likely to attend to, and misinterpret, internal bodily sensations. When in a social situation, social phobics are prone to shift attention from others and towards a detailed monitoring of themselves. They tend to notice slight changes in facial temperature or heart rate and then interpret those sensations as signs of their nervousness and become convinced that it is an indication that they are coming across poorly. Jennifer Wild and colleagues obtained particularly evidence in support of this model.

While high and low socially anxious college students were having a 10 min conversation with an experimental confederate they received false feedback about their level of physiological arousal. The feedback itself, which consisted of vibrations at set time intervals to the chest, was the same for all participants but some were told that the vibrations reflected an increase in arousal, others were told it meant a decrease in arousal, and a control group was told that only the comfort of the apparatus was being tested and that any vibrations they felt were irrelevant to the current experiment.

Participants told that their level of physiological arousal had increased during their conversation reported feeling considerably more anxious, and believed they came across more poorly in the conversation than those who where told that their arousal had decreased or whom received no feedback (controls).

So people told that their arousal had increased felt that they made a poorer impression but did they really? The data suggest that the answer to this question is, not really. As the researchers put it, “Believing one’s arousal is increasing during a social interaction has a large impact on the individual’s perception of how well the interaction is going and how well they come across, as these are influenced by anxiety level and perceived bodily sensations. However, this internal state is not necessarily obvious to the social interaction partner and other observers, as indicated by the absence of condition on the item “How anxious did the person look?”, and on negative items on the Behaviours Checklist for the independent assessor.” People led to believe that they were nervous were more likely to be judged not more negatively but rather lower on positive behaviors.

This is fascinating research because it strongly suggests that the anxiety as well as conviction that one has made a poor impression that marks social phobia is largely due to the greater attention to, and misinterpretation of, internal bodily states and other forms of feedback. And it suggest that treatments should help phobics focus attention outside themselves, away from self-montoring, and instead towards the interactions with others.

Wild, J., Clark, D. M., Ehlers, A., & McManus, F. (2008). Perception of arousal in social anxiety: Effects of false feedback during a social interaction. J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry, 39(2), 102-16.