Social anxiety and the cued activation of relational knowledge

A cued activation procedure was used to examine the hypothesis that social anxiety involves an expectation of being rejected or evaluated negatively by others, combined with a concern about impression management. Participants underwent a conditioning procedure in which distinctive computer tones were paired with thoughts of social rejection and acceptance, respectively. In a pilot study, a lexical decision task established that when these tone cues were played later they differentially activated expectations of rejection. In the main study, female Participants interacted with a mate confederate while one of the tones, or a control tone, sounded repeatedly in the background. Several indicators Of social anxiety showed an interaction between level of public self-consciousness and the nature of the tone played. High-seif conscious individuals tended to be affected by the cites, whereas low-self-conscious people were not affected.