Self-presentational concerns and social anxiety: The role of generalized impression expectancies

Abstract

Two experiments examined the degree to which socially anxious people's interpersonal concerns reflect doubts about their personal self-presentational efficacy versus a generalized belief that people tend to evaluate others unfavorably. In the first study, subjects imagined how another person would evaluate them after a brief glance, after a 5-min conversation, or after a prolonged interaction. Compared to subjects low in social anxiety, socially anxious subjects thought they would be evaluated more megatively in every condition. In a second study, subjects were asked how a perceiver would evaluate either them or another person after a very brief, short, or long interaction. As before, anxious subjects thought they would be judged less favorably than less anxious subjects regardless of the length of the interaction. Importantly, socially anxious subjects indicated that perceivers would evaluate other people just as negatively, whereas low anxiety subjects thought they personally would be evaluated more positively than most other people. The implications of these findings for the growing literature on adaptive self-illusions is discussed.