The Effect of Cognitive Processes on Social Anxiety - Research Proposal Example

Empirical Research Seminar Student’ Name Institution Affiliation Introduction of Study Numerous studies have shown that cognitive processes produce and maintain anxiety in social situations. When individuals with anxiety encounter social situations, their anxiety is exacerbated. In actual or anticipated situations, these individuals construct a negatively biased image of the way they generally assume that other people see them. They orient their attention towards the concept of threat or danger and this impeded their social performance. This study will investigate the impact of cognitive processes on social anxiety or social phobia Purpose of Study There are limited manipulation studies, which examine the effect of cognitive processes on social anxiety or social phobia. The studies, which have examined this effect, are mostly undertaken in clinical settings using patients undergoing treatment. Thus, the degree to which the results from the studies can be generalized to the general population is limited. Social phobia and anxiety is a condition, which not only affects the patients but many groups of people in the society. For instance, a significant proportion of young adults and adolescents experience anxiety and phobia in social interactions. This study will investigate the impact of cognitive processes on social anxiety or social phobia in a group of university students. Literature Review Social phobia/anxiety impairs an individual ability to relate with other people. It is a self-protective social conduct, which is portrayed by an extreme distress over causing negative reaction, for instance, being enjoyed, being criticized, being found in the wrong, or being unsuitable while dealing with other people (Vassilopoulos, 2004). Individuals dread and have a yearning to evade social situations whereby they are required to perform in from on a formal or informal attentive audience. Cognitive factors are considered as the main causal factor of social anxiety or phobia. According to the cognitive therapy model, social phobic’s are anxious when they are anticipating or taking part in social situations as they have unusual assumptions or beliefs which cause them to behave in a manner which leads to loss of status or rejection (Dannahy & Stopa, 2007). Once elicited, the negative social assessment deliberations lead to a number of vicious circle, and this builds social phobia. First, behavioral, and somatic anxiety indicators become further source of perceived anxiety and danger. Second, the social phobic’s get preoccupied with negative thoughts and the fixation hinders their capacity to process social cues, this leads to objective performance deterioration (Zou, Hudson & Rapee, 2007). The individual social phobic actions, such as acting in a less warm manner, may bring about less friendly behavior from other people and this leads the individual to substantiate the phobic fears (Zou et al., 2007). Thirdly, when these individuals are not fixated with their inner dialogue, they are mostly prone to take note of facets of their behaviors and that of other people, which they interpret as indication of impending or actual negative social assessment. The main concerns for the individuals are being speechless or incoherent, being social awkward and being visibly distressed (sweating, trembling, and blushing). They have ultimate fears of being overpowered, drawing unfavorable attention to themselves, feeling diminished or embarrassed; they anticipate and dread such prospects above all. Various studies have presented conclusions that cognitive aspects usually sustain the social phobia patterns of behaving and responding. According to Foa, Gilboa-Schechtman, and Amir (2000), “cognitive biases may have a synergistic effect on the maintenance of social anxiety…” (p. 516) and “…such a tendency is yet another factor that may play a role in the maintenance of social anxiety” (p. 517). In addition, they also stated that “negative anticipations are likely to interfere with generalized social phobic’s motivations to take advantage of social opportunities and thus contribute to the maintenance of their social isolation” (p. 743). Gilboa-Schechtman, Foa and Amir (1999) also noted that the individual preferential processing causes them to maintain social phobia through amplifying their conviction of being socially wanting and hence the rejection by others. According to Vassilopoulos (2004), cognitive processes that lead to social anxiety or phobia are categorized in three stages: anticipatory processing, in-situation process, and post-event processing. Mellings & Alden (2000) argued that the anticipatory processing is a ruminative process, which brings to mind bad memories of earlier social situations as well as predictions of future failure in social performances. Various studies have pointed to the presence of this process in persons with social anxiety (Vassilopoulos, 2004; Hinrichsen & Clark, 2003). Others have also shown that higher social anxiety levels result from negative predictions of future performance, reflecting over negative memory of earlier social occasion and engagement of negative participatory processing (Schulz, Alpers, & Hofmann, 2008; Hinrishsen & Clark, 2003). Individuals low in social anxiety also engages in anticipatory process, however in a positive manner (Vassilopoulos, 2008; Brown & Stopa, 2006). When it comes to the second stage- in-situation processing- in social anxiety, various studies have indicated that people with social anxiety are normally hyper-vigilant to social threats and they direct their attention away from the supposed threat (Wieser, Pauli & Weyers et al. 2009). Persons with social anxiety are engage in self-focussed attention and this worsens their social attention (Zou et al. 2007). When it comes to post-event processing, it entails the biased retrieval of past social failures and examination of an individual perceived or real failures in social events. Most people who experience engage in post-event processing (Kocovski & Rector, 2008). Dannahy & Stopa (2007) found that the social performance perception of persons with social anxiety is interconnected with the level of their engagement in post-event processing. Social anxiety and phobia management procedures integrate cognitive factors. There are four dysfunctional processes portrayed by people with social phobia; these processes maintain or worsen their social anxiety. The first process entails shifting their attention to detailed observation and monitoring of themselves when entering social situations (Hinrichsen & Clark, 2003). This causes heightened awareness of feared anxiety-related responses as reduced processing of external and situational information, for instance the conversation content and other people behavior. The self-focussed attention generates the information that persons with social phobia presume reflect the impression of others on their behaviors (Vassilopoulos, 2004). Social phobia results from a strong need for an individual to communicate a certain positive impression of himself/herself to other people and the clear insecurity regarding their capability to do so. Because of experiences acting together with inner behavior inclinations, persons with social anxiety and phobia acquire a number of assumptions regarding themselves and their social situation, which cause them to assume they are in danger in social situations (Mellings & Alden, 2000). Particularly, they believe that when they enter such situations, they are in danger of acting in an unacceptable and inept way and these actions will have devastating effects such as loss of worth, rejection and loss of status. Hypotheses Hypothesis 1- Individuals who experience social anxiety or phobia construe the external social situations in a very negative manner. Cognitive models have shown that individuals who experience social phobia or anxiety have the tendency of interpreting ambiguous social situations in a negative way and that they tend to construe unambiguous but rather negative social situations in a disastrous way. This study will assess the individual understanding of the ambiguous non-social and social situations. This study will examine whether the persons with social anxiety or phobia are more prone to construct and believe negative construal of social situations. In addition, it will examine whether social phobia is related to various unconstructive predispositions in self-referent social situations interpretation. The assessment of external social situation in a negative manner partly results from individual heightened self-focused attention. Clark and Wells model posits that self-focused concentration raises the understanding of any information which is prone to be deemed as an indicator that the individual has failed or is about to fail, to communicate a good enough impression to other people. This in turn increases social anxiety, which in turns causes the individuals to view the social situations in a negative manner. Clark and Well (1995) model on social anxiety lays emphasis on the function of reduced processing of external cues. The model posits that it is important to direct attention from the external threat cues in order to maintain social anxiety. This preferential processing is directed towards the individual who is anxious or phobic internal world, for instance their attention is more self-focussed. This attention leads to the maintenance of the anxiety or phobia, through attending to inner prompts, for instance body-state information, the individuals may miss external cues that other people actually perceive them in a positive manner than they assume. This notion is in line with the viewpoint that socially anxious persons have a tendency of looking at other individuals; this makes them appear bored, uninterested and hampers their social performance, hence reducing the chances of positive responses from others. This study will investigate whether social anxiety or phobia causes individuals to portray reduced processing of external social cues. Researchers have posited that persons who experience social phobia or anxiety engages in risky behaviors, for instance to prevent shaking at a party; they may hold a wine glass very tight. Such behaviors may prevent these individuals from their catastrophic convictions regarding their feared actions (such as shaking) and their feared outcomes (such as being humiliated). The safety behaviors may also increase the chance of feared behaviors. Individuals who experience social anxiety or phobia also tend to preoccupy themselves with monitoring their social performance and bodily symptoms in social situation. The safety behaviors and preoccupation usually worsen their social behaviors, which possibly causes bad social interaction patterns and it further perpetuates their social phobia. Research Method Quantitative research method will be used for this study. This method will produce quantifiable and reliable data, which will be generalized to some larger population. Quantitative analysis will allow the researcher to test the research hypotheses. Surveys and questionnaires will be used to collect data. Participants The research participants will be 70 students from two universities in the US; 35 participants will be participants who will meet the DSM-IV (APA, 2000) criterion for primary diagnosis social phobia diagnosis; 35 participants will be recruited using a screening process in order to acquire persons with different social anxiety levels. The inclusion criteria will be students who will receive a primary diagnosis of social anxiety or phobia with no secondary panic disorder diagnosis. The exclusion criteria will be participants with a secondary major depression, substance dependence or abuse, bipolar disorder or the existence of an organic condition. Materials The Liebowitz social anxiety scale (LSAS) and the Social interaction anxiety scale (SIAS) will be used to assess the anxiety levels of the students after a social events. The SIAS normally has twenty items measure, which are assessed on a 0-4 scale, meant to evaluate social interaction anxiety. Every item will be rated on 4 (“extremely characteristic”) to 0 (“ not at all characteristic”). LSAS is a 24-items scale mostly utilized to evaluate the avoidance and fear of particular situation in social phobia patients. It has 13 performance situations and 11 social interaction situations. Fear for every item will be rated on a four-point scale from 3 (severe) to 0 (none) and avoidance of similar situations of a 4-point scale range from 3 (usually) to 0 (never). Adequate data supporting the validity and reliability of the two measures exist. Questionnaires will be used to determine whether these individuals understand the external social situations in a very negative or positive manner. The questionnaire will also examine the research questions. Procedure The first step will entail subjecting the research participants to a social event and using Liebowitz social anxiety scale (LSAS) and the Social interaction anxiety scale (SIAS) to assess the anxiety levels of the students. The behavior and attention during the social event will be assessed through participant observation by the researcher. The next step will entail completing the questionnaires by the research participants. The information will then be analyzed and compared with the patient anxiety levels to determine whether higher anxiety levels cause the individuals to construe their situations in a negative manner. Data Analysis with anticipated results The data from the two scales will be analyzed and linked to that from that of the general questionnaire. The responses from the questionnaires will be coded for all questions in the questionnaires and the Statistical package for Social Sciences (S.P.S,S.) used to determine the participants view of external social situations. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) will be use to test whether there are significant differences between the social anxiety levels before and during the social event. A P value less than 0.05 will show that there are significant differences between the anxiety levels before and during the social event, whereas P levels more than 0.05 will show that there are no differences. The anticipated result is that there will be significant differences between anxiety levels before and after the social event. The anxiety levels will be high during the social event will be higher relative to the levels before the event. Discussion During the social event, individuals will portray self-protective social conduct, portrayed by an extreme distress over causing negative reaction. Their social anxiety levels will increase during the event due to heightened awareness of feared anxiety-related responses. References APA. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, Fourth Edition ‐ Text Revision (4th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc. Brown, M., & Stopa, L. (2006). Does anticipation help or hinder performance in a subsequent speech? Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 35(2), 133-147. Clark, D. & Wells, A. (1995). A cognitive model of social phobia. In: Heimberg, R.G. (Ed.), Social Phobia: Diagnosis, Assessment, and Treatment. Guilford Press, New York, pp. 69–93. Dannahy, L., & Stopa, L. (2007). Post-event processing in social anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45(6), 1207-1219. Foa,N., Gilboa-Schechtman, E., & Amir, N. (2000).Memory bias in generalized social phobia: Remembering negative emotional expressions. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 14, pp. 501–519 Gilboa-Schechtman, E., Foa., E., & Amir, N. (1999) Attentional biases for facial expressions in social phobia: The face-in-the-crowd paradigm. Cognition and Emotion, 133, pp. 05–318 Hinrichsen, H., & Clark, D. (2003). Anticipatory processing in social anxiety: Two pilot studies. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 34(3-4), 205-218. Kocovski, N., & Rector, N. (2008). Post-event processing in social anxiety disorder: Idiosyncratic priming in the course of CBT. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 32(1), 23-36 Mellings, T., & Alden, L. (2000). Cognitive processes in social anxiety: The effects of self- focus, rumination and anticipatory processing. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38(3), 243-257. Schulz, S., Alpers, G., & Hofmann, S. (2008). Negative self-focused cognitions mediate the effect of trait social anxiety on state anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 46(4), 438-449. Vassilopoulos, S. (2004). Anticipatory processing in social anxiety. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 32(3), 303-311. Vassilopoulos, S. (2008). Coping strategies and anticipatory processing in high and low socially anxious individuals. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 22(1), 98-107. Wieser, M., Pauli, P., Weyers, P., & Alpers, G. et al. (2009) Fear of negative evaluation and the hypervigilance-avoidance hypothesis: An eye-tracking study. Journal of Neural Transmission, 116, 717-723. Zou, J., Hudson, J., &Rapee, R. (2007). The effect of attentional focus on social anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45(10), 2326-2333. Read More

They have ultimate fears of being overpowered, drawing unfavorable attention to themselves, feeling diminished or embarrassed; they anticipate and dread such prospects above all. Various studies have presented conclusions that cognitive aspects usually sustain the social phobia patterns of behaving and responding. According to Foa, Gilboa-Schechtman, and Amir (2000), “cognitive biases may have a synergistic effect on the maintenance of social anxiety…” (p. 516) and “…such a tendency is yet another factor that may play a role in the maintenance of social anxiety” (p. 517). In addition, they also stated that “negative anticipations are likely to interfere with generalized social phobic’s motivations to take advantage of social opportunities and thus contribute to the maintenance of their social isolation” (p. 743). Gilboa-Schechtman, Foa and Amir (1999) also noted that the individual preferential processing causes them to maintain social phobia through amplifying their conviction of being socially wanting and hence the rejection by others.

According to Vassilopoulos (2004), cognitive processes that lead to social anxiety or phobia are categorized in three stages: anticipatory processing, in-situation process, and post-event processing. Mellings & Alden (2000) argued that the anticipatory processing is a ruminative process, which brings to mind bad memories of earlier social situations as well as predictions of future failure in social performances. Various studies have pointed to the presence of this process in persons with social anxiety (Vassilopoulos, 2004; Hinrichsen & Clark, 2003).

Others have also shown that higher social anxiety levels result from negative predictions of future performance, reflecting over negative memory of earlier social occasion and engagement of negative participatory processing (Schulz, Alpers, & Hofmann, 2008; Hinrishsen & Clark, 2003). Individuals low in social anxiety also engages in anticipatory process, however in a positive manner (Vassilopoulos, 2008; Brown & Stopa, 2006). When it comes to the second stage- in-situation processing- in social anxiety, various studies have indicated that people with social anxiety are normally hyper-vigilant to social threats and they direct their attention away from the supposed threat (Wieser, Pauli & Weyers et al. 2009). Persons with social anxiety are engage in self-focussed attention and this worsens their social attention (Zou et al. 2007). When it comes to post-event processing, it entails the biased retrieval of past social failures and examination of an individual perceived or real failures in social events.

Most people who experience engage in post-event processing (Kocovski & Rector, 2008). Dannahy & Stopa (2007) found that the social performance perception of persons with social anxiety is interconnected with the level of their engagement in post-event processing. Social anxiety and phobia management procedures integrate cognitive factors. There are four dysfunctional processes portrayed by people with social phobia; these processes maintain or worsen their social anxiety. The first process entails shifting their attention to detailed observation and monitoring of themselves when entering social situations (Hinrichsen & Clark, 2003).

This causes heightened awareness of feared anxiety-related responses as reduced processing of external and situational information, for instance the conversation content and other people behavior. The self-focussed attention generates the information that persons with social phobia presume reflect the impression of others on their behaviors (Vassilopoulos, 2004). Social phobia results from a strong need for an individual to communicate a certain positive impression of himself/herself to other people and the clear insecurity regarding their capability to do so.

Because of experiences acting together with inner behavior inclinations, persons with social anxiety and phobia acquire a number of assumptions regarding themselves and their social situation, which cause them to assume they are in danger in social situations (Mellings & Alden, 2000).

Read More