Premium
Responses of the Socially Anxious to the Prospect of Interpersonal Evaluation
Author(s) -
DePaulo Bella M.,
Epstein Jennifer A.,
LeMay Carol Steele
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1990.tb00247.x
Subject(s) - psychology , interview , social psychology , interpersonal communication , anxiety , social anxiety , interpersonal relationship , control (management) , interpersonal interaction , social approval , clinical psychology , psychiatry , management , political science , law , economics
We predicted that socially anxious people who are faced with the prospect of an interpersonal evaluation will act in an inhibited and withdrawn way Subjects who scored low or high on a measure of social anxiety told four stories about themselves to an interviewer In the anticipated‐evaluation condition, the subjects learned that after they had told their stories, the interviewer would tell them her impressions of them In the control condition, no mention was made of an evaluation Judges rated transcripts of the stories As predicted, socially anxious subjects who thought they were going to be evaluated (relative to anxious subjects in the control condition and nonanxious subjects in both conditions) told shorter stories, and the events in their stories were commonplace rather than unique Their stories were also less revealing about them as individuals, and less vivid Contrary to a second prediction, socially anxious subjects who expected to be evaluated did not act any less inhibited or withdrawn when their interviewers were described as very trusting than when they were described as very wary Implications are discussed