EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL ANXIETY

Abstract

If human social anxiety is not predominately about the fear of physical injury or attack, as it is in other animals, then, to understand human social anxiety (i.e., fear of evaluation), it is necessary to consider why certain types of relationships are so important. Why do humans need to court the good feelings of others and fear not doing so? And why, when people wish to appear attractive to others (e.g., to make friends, date a desired sexual partner, or give a good presentation), do some people become so overwhelmed with anxiety that they behave submissively and fearfully (which can be seen as unattractive) or are avoidant? This article has suggested that humans have evolved to compete for attractiveness to make good impressions because these are related to eliciting important social resources and investments from others. These, in turn, have been linked to inclusive fitness and have physiological regulating effects. Being allocated a low social rank or ostracized carries many negative consequences for controlling social resources and physiological regulation. Social anxiety, like shame, can be adaptive to the extent that it helps people to "stay on track" with what is socially acceptable and what is not and could result in social sanction and exclusion. However, dysfunctional social anxiety is the result of activation of basic defensive mechanisms (and modules for) for threat detection and response (e.g., inhibition, eye-gaze avoidance, flight, or submission) that can be…