Sense of timing: A skill deficit in heterosocially anxious women

Abstract

Groups of heterosocially competent and incompetent undergraduate women were selected using both a self-report measure of social anxiety and judges' ratings of both anxiety and skill in a simulated first-date interaction. Selected subjects viewed a videotape of a male speaker discussing various aspects of his life and were asked to press a switch whenever they thought a response would communicate understanding or rapport. The results tentatively extended the evidence for the response timing-placement phenomenon to socially competent and incompetent women as well as men. While socially competent and incompetent women did not differ in the frequency of their responses, they did tend to differ in the timing, placement, or distribution of their responses. The results suggest that previous social skills training and research may have emphasized response acquisition and frequency to the detriment of response synchronization to partner cues.