Abstract
Current cognitive models stress the importance of negative self-perceptions in maintaining social anxiety, but focus predominantly on content rather than structure. Two studies examine the role of self-structure (self-organisation, self-complexity, and self-concept clarity) in social anxiety. In study one, self-organisation and self-concept clarity were correlated with social anxiety, and a step-wise multiple regression showed that after controlling for depression and self-esteem, which explained 35% of the variance in social anxiety scores, self-concept clarity uniquely predicted social anxiety and accounted for an additional 7% of the variance in social anxiety scores in an undergraduate sample (N=95) and the interaction between self-concept clarity and compartmentalisation (an aspect of evaluative self-organisation) at step 3 of the multiple regression accounted for a further 3% of the variance in social anxiety scores. In study two, high (n=26) socially anxious participants demonstrated less self-concept clarity than low socially anxious participants (n=26) on both self-report (used in study one) and on computerised measures of self-consistency and confidence in self-related judgments. The high socially anxious group had more compartmentalised self-organisation than the low anxious group, but there were no differences between the two groups on any of the other measures of self-organisation. Self-complexity did not contribute to social anxiety in either study, although this may have been due to the absence of a stressor. Overall, the results suggest that self-structure has a potentially important role in understanding social anxiety and that self-concept clarity and other aspects of self-structure such as compartmentalisation interact with each other and could be potential maintaining factors in social anxiety. Cognitive therapy for social phobia might influence self-structure, and understanding the role of structural variables in maintenance and treatment could eventually help to improve treatment outcome.
Highlights
We compared high and low socially anxious participants on the same measures of self-structure that we used in study one, and included a computerised measure of self-concept clarity, which was an adapted version of Markus’ (1977) me/not-me self-description task
The me/not-me task allowed us to derive separate measures of positive and negative consistency; for example, high socially anxious individuals may be quite certain about negative aspects of self-view, but less certain about positive aspects of self-view
In order to control for the associations between social anxiety, depression, and self-esteem, all analyses were initially conducted using depression and self-esteem scores as covariates
Summary
We compared high and low socially anxious participants on the same measures of self-structure that we used in study one, and included a computerised measure of self-concept clarity, which was an adapted version of Markus’ (1977) me/not-me self-description task. This task allowed us to measure consistency of self-view, which is another way of conceptualising self-concept clarity, and to sample the individual’s degree of confidence about self-related judgments. We predicted that the high socially anxious group would have lower self-concept clarity overall and that they would be less consistent and less confident in their judgments about whether words were self-descriptive. Based on the findings of the first study, we did not expect to find any differences between the two groups in self-complexity
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