Social phobia and positive social events: The price of success

“Similarly, people with social phobia have less favorable perceptions of their own social abilities than others do (Wallace & Alden, 1997).”

“…Stein, Goldin, Sareen, Zorrilla, & Brown, 2002), report biased estimates of the probability and danger of various social events (Foa, Franklin, Perry, & Herbert, 1996), and consistently underestimate their social performance and overestimate the visibility of anxiety (e.g., Wallace & Alden, 1997).”

“However, Wallace and Alden (1995, 1997) propose that fear of eventual negative appraisal (i.e., a delayed form of FNE) accounts for acute fear of positive appraisal, suggesting a lack of differentiation between the constructs of FPE and FNE.”

“Consistent with the notion, Wallace and Alden (1995, 1997) have reported that socially anxious individuals worry that positive evaluation of their performance raises the social standards by which they will be evaluated in the future, whereas they do not believe that their typical performance will…”

“…perspective of SAD, the fact remains that such negative interpersonal experiences appear to be associated with an increase in the likelihood of dysphoria and other negative emotions, poor self-efficacy, and increased avoidance behaviors (Alden, Bieling, & Wallace, 1994; Wallace & Alden, 1997).”

“In addition, after receiving positive feedback, people with SAD predicted that their partner would expect more from them in the next interaction and that they would fall short of those expectations (Alden & Wallace, 1995; Wallace & Alden, 1997).”

“Child Development, 78, 246-263. Bouffard-Bouchard, T., Parent, S., & Larivee, S. (1991). Influence of self-efficacy on self-regulation and performance among junior and senior high-school age students.”

“[8, 9] The BFOE model is consistent with previous literature underscoring a general relationship between social anxiety and positivity impairment,[10, 11] including impaired positive inferential biases[12] and anticipation of negative emotional reactions to positive social events.[13, 14] Moreover, previous findings o…”

“They are also hypersensitive to social threat, leading to information-processing biases, including discounting positive social feedback and negatively interpreting ambiguous social feedback (e.g., Leary, Kowalski, & Campbell, 1988; Spurr & Stopa, 2003; Wallace & Alden, 1991, 1997 ).”

“Meanwhile, among adult samples of social phobics, such differences have commonly been reported (Alden & Wallace, 1995; Beidel et al., 1985; Rapee & Lim, 1992; Wallace & Alden, 1997 ).”

“Taken together with the findings of Wallace and Alden (1997) regarding GSPs’ negative mood following positive social interactions, these results might suggest that GSPs’ negative expectations regarding favorable social events tend to materialize more than their positive expectations.”

“Work done by both Gilbert (2001) and Wallace and Alden (1995, 1997) suggest that FPE may only indirectly relate to social anxiety through FNE.”

“GSP has been related to negative perceptions of own social ability (Alden & Wallace, 1995; Carleton, Kelsey, & Asmundson, 2007; Wallace & Alden, 1991, 1997) as well as increased response to self-referential criticism (Blair et al., under revision-b).”

“Moreover, such judgmental biases tend to persist even in the face of evidence to the contrary, i.e., positive social outcomes (e.g., Wallace & Alden, 1997).”

“Why may positive social signals be interpreted more negatively([9,14,15,21,23])? Some researchers have suggested that happy faces may be interpreted as reflecting mockery,([9,15]) an expression of social dominance by the other,([10]) or a threat of raised social expectations.([14,21,23]) Future studies are needed to d…”

“To resolve the predicament of the discriminability among social anxiety and depression in structural models, Watson and Clark (1997) have noted that, as NA and PA are both higher-order personality traits that do not serve for discrimination, studies should investigate the lower-order traits influenced by these syndrom…”

“In a follow-up study, Wallace and Alden (1997) found that even after a positive social interaction, people with social phobia still viewed their performance negatively.”

“…of themselves, and similarly, to interpret positive social events as indicating that they possess positive personality characteristics, when analyses have controlled for the effects of concurrent depression (Heimberg et al., 1989; Wilson & Rapee, in press; but see Wallace & Alden, 1995, 1997).”

“Indeed, studies by Wallace and Alden (1995, 1997) provide evidence implying that just this process might occur.”

“Secondly, research by Alden et al. (1994), Wallace and Alden (1991, 1995, 1997) has shown socially anxious individuals also possess higher standards for social behaviour than those low in social anxiety, although this is only in relation to the perceived deficit in their own social skills.”

“Research has indicated that people with social anxiety may feel threatened by positive social feedback, possibly because it may mean that others will have higher expectations of them in the future [38].”

“…(e.g., Jackson & Ebnet, 2006; Jackson & Eglitis, 2005), others as rejecting (e.g., Jackson, Towson, & Narduzzi, 1997; Meleschko & Alden, 1993; Wallace & Alden, 1997), and the self as less socially skilled (e.g., Wallace & Alden, 1991) may maintain or increase social anxiety and/or avoidance…”

“Consistent with these predictions, recent evidence suggests that individuals with social phobia exhibit interpretational biases that favor socially threatening information (Amir, Foa, & Coles, 1998a, b; Stopa & Clark, 2000; Wallace & Alden, 1997; see review by Heinrichs & Hofmann, 2001).”

“Avoidance of stressful situations thwarts opportunities for inhibitory learning by blocking access to information that is incompatible with fear-related cognitions (Alden & Wallace, 1991; Hofmann, 2004; McManus, Clark, & Hackmann, 2000; Moscovitch, 2009; Wallace & Alden, 1995, 1997).”

“…et al., 2013); they may lack assertiveness, suppress their emotions, show disinterest in conversational partners, and avoid engaging in intimate conversations with close others (Davila & Beck, 2002; Kashdan & Steger, 2006; Meleshko & Alden, 1993; Sparrevohn & Rapee, 2009; Wallace & Alden, 1997).”

“Following procedures developed in earlier studies (e.g., Stopa & Clark, 1993; Taylor & Alden, 2010; Wallace & Alden, 1997), confederates were trained to converse in a pleasant, but reserved social manner using a scripted set of verbal and nonverbal behaviors.”

“…self-protective social goals, and negative predictions about future social events in individuals with SAD (Alden, Mellings, & Laposa, 2004; Alden, Taylor, Laposa, &Mellings, 2008; Wallace & Alden, 1997) – outcomes that would be expected to shortcircuit the process of friendship development.”

“In addition, the results of research by Wallace and Alden (1995, 1997) suggests that positive social feedback may have little impact on the way in which socially anxious individuals view their social abilities, but may lead to increases in their estimates of the level of performance expected of them by other people.”

“Suppose that a socially anxious person has an interpersonal interaction and the interacting person is overtly friendly towards him/her then, according to the work of Alden and colleagues (2008; Wallace and Alden, 1997), that individual may experience anxiety upon having performed well and received positive social feed…”

“…anxious individuals worry that positive evaluation of their performance raises the social standards by which they will be evaluated in the future, although they do not believe that their typical performance will change for the better (Alden, Mellings, & Laposa, 2004; Wallace & Alden, 1995, 1997).”

“, 2000] and heightened anxiety after positive feedback [Alden and Wallace, 1995; Wallace and Alden, 1997].”

“Other studies have found that the way in which people with social phobia perceive their partner during a conversation influences their own level of anxiety, and subsequent interactions with that partner (Heimberg, Acerra, & Holstein, 1985; Wallace & Alden, 1995, 1997).”

“Further, individuals diagnosed with SAD even show negative affective reactions to successful social interactions (Wallace & Alden, 1997), possibly because they anticipate a positive social outcome to subsequently result in heightened standards for what is considered adequate, which might blunt the…”

“These studies are derived from an approach to social anxiety drawing on self-verification theory (Swann, 1983; Wallace and Alden, 1997).”

“Thus, the strategies people high in social anxiety use to cope with social life may also bring about the social failure they so badly try to avoid (Alden & Bieling, 1998; Stangier, Heidenreich, & Schermelleh-Engel, 2006; Wallace & Alden, 1995, 1997).”

“Moreover, contrary to social phobia in adults (e.g., Wallace & Alden, 1997), children displaying sub-clinical social anxiety appear capable of experiencing significant increases in self-esteem in response to social success.”

“Because individuals with SA have been shown to lack a positive interpretation bias even for overtly positive social situations (Alden et al. 2008; Amir et al. 1998; Wallace and Alden 1997), we modified the WSAP to include only word-sentence pairs with overtly negative and overtly positive interpretations.”

“This pattern reflects research suggesting that people who are motivated by self-protection (i.e., avoiding disapproval) report greater negative affect and less positive affect in interactions (Wallace & Alden, 1997).”

“Previous research has demonstrated that patients with social phobia experience anxiety in social contexts not just when they anticipate or perceive negative evaluation but also when they anticipate or perceive positive evaluation of their performance (Wallace & Alden, 1997; Weeks & Heimberg, 2004).”

“This, ultimately, results in potential negative evaluation from others because the bar one sets for oneself is increasingly higher (Wallace & Alden, 1995; Wallace & Alden, 1997).”

“Those reporting high levels of social anxiety symptoms predict they will embarrass themselves in hypothetical stressful social situations such as giving a short speech before an audience or interacting with a stranger (Wallace & Alden, 1995, 1997; Wenzel & Holt, 2003).”

“Interestingly, Wallace and Alden (1997) found that individuals with social phobia experienced more negative affect following a positive social interaction than participants who did not have a social phobia, because they were more likely to judge their social aptitude to fall short of others’ social…”

“Put differently, socially anxious people may not favor positive evaluations because such evaluations lead to an increase in others’ expectations of anxious people, and failure to meet those raised expectations is likely and bound to bring negative evaluations (Wallace & Alden, 1995, 1997).”

“…Mathews, 2000; Huppert, Foa, Furr, Filip, & Mathews, 2003), anticipation of more frequent and intense negative emotional reactions to positive social events (Gilboa-Schechtman, Franklin, & Foa, 2000), and increased anxiety in response to overtly positive social interactions (Wallace & Alden, 1997).”

“This can lead to negative expectations for and subsequent avoidance of future social interactions, which further decreases opportunities to develop social skills, maintaining and further exacerbating social anxiety (Wallace & Alden, 1997).”