social anxiety and self-presentation: a …...social anxiety and self-presentation: a...

Psychological Bulletin1982, Vol. 92, No. 3, 641-669

Copyright 1982 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.0033-2909/82/9203-064 IS00.75

Social Anxiety and Self-Presentation:A Conceptualization and Model

Barry R. SchlenkerUniversity of Florida

Mark R. LearyDenison University

This article presents a self-presentation approach to the study of social anxietythat proposes that social anxiety arises when people are motivated to make apreferred impression on real or imagined audiences but doubt they will do so,and thus perceive or imagine unsatisfactory evaluative reactions from subjectivelyimportant audiences. We presume that specific situational and dispositional an-tecedents of social anxiety operate by influencing people's motivation to impressothers and their expectations of satisfactorily doing so. In contrast to drive modelsof anxiety but consistent with social learning theory, it is argued that the cognitivestate of the individual mediates both affective arousal and behavior. The tradi-tional inverted-U relation between anxiety and performance is reexamined in thislight. Implications of the approach for counseling situations are considered, espe-cially the recommendation that treatments be tailored to the specific type of self-presentational problem encountered by clients,

Social anxiety is a prevalent and occasion-ally debilitating personal problem even innormal populations (e.g., Bruskin. 1973;Bryant & Trower, 1974; Martinson & Zer-face, 1970; Zimbardo, 1977). Commensuratewith an increased awareness of the phenom-enon is a growing literature on its causes andtreatments, appearing under such labels associal anxiety, shyness, dating anxiety, het-erosexual-social anxiety, stagefright, speechanxiety, communication apprehension, reti-cence, and embarrassment. Despite thequantity of work and the frequency withwhich counselors see clients with such inter-personal problems, the topic suffers a lack ofconceptual integration.

The present article examines the conceptof social anxiety and proffers a self-presen-tation approach. It addresses the antecedentsof the experience, the varieties of social anx-iety, the behavioral consequences, and someof the implications for counseling.

The present paper was supported by a Research Sci-entist Development Award (K02-MH00183) from theNational Institute of Mental Health and a faculty grantfrom the graduate school at the University of Floridafrom NIH Biomedical Research Support Program funds.

Thanks are extended to Lawrence J. Severy, MarvinE. Shaw, and C. R. Snyder for their helpful comments.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Barry R.Schlenker, Department of Psychology, University ofFlorida, Gainesville, Florida 32611.

The Concept of Social Anxiety

As a point of departure, it is necessary toask whether a class of anxieties (a) can beempirically isolated from other anxieties andconsidered conceptually distinct and (b) hasthe common property of being social in na-ture; that is, of being aroused and intensifiedby other people. Factor analytic studies offear and anxiety inventories have consis-tently obtained solutions that include eitherone (Endler, Hunt, & Rosenstein, 1962;Landy & Gaupp, 1971;Lawlis, 1971; Miller,Barrett, Hampe, & Noble, 1972; Strahan,1974) or two (Bates, 1971; Bernstein & Allen,1969; Braun & Reynolds, 1969) factors re-flecting socially aroused anxieties. The "so-cial nervousness" factor obtained by Strahan(1974) is representative of those reported instudies finding a single social anxiety factor.It included items such as being introducedto new people, giving a speech, being inter-viewed for a job, being in a room full ofstrangers, and dating someone for the firsttime. A similar social anxiety factor was ob-tained in a study of children's fears and wasdenned by items such as making mistakes,being criticized, making another person an-gry, and reciting in class (Miller et al., 1972).In studies that found two social anxiety fac-tors, one reflected concerns about certainordinary social events (e.g., speaking before

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642 BARRY R. SCHLENKER AND MARK. R. LEARY

a group, meeting someone for the first time,being a leader, being with a member of theopposite sex), and the other reflected con-cerns about social failures and criticism (e.g.,looking foolish, being criticized, making mis-takes, being misunderstood).

It is not completely clear why some ofthese studies obtained one and others twosocial anxiety factors, particularly since mostof them used very similar scale item poolsand similar factor analytic procedures. Itseems that when two factors are obtainedthey reflect a distinction between (a) beingin an evaluative situation where one's be-havior is especially scrutinized by others (andmight be found lacking) and (b) being in asituation where one's behavior already hasbeen judged as inadequate by others. We willreturn to this distinction shortly. At any rate,these studies provide evidence that people'sratings of anxiety-producing situations iden-tify an empirically distinguishable class ofanxieties that arise in response to socialevents.

Social anxiety will be defined as anxietyresulting from the prospect or presence ofpersonal evaluation in real or imagined socialsituations. Anxiety is a cognitive and affectiveresponse characterized by apprehension aboutan impending, potentially negative outcomethat one thinks one is unable to avert. Thesource of the apprehension may be consciousor nonconscious, and the impending threatreal or imagined (Lesse, 1970). Anxiety fluc-tuates over time and situations, but there areindividual differences (produced by personalexperience and probably biological factors)in the degree to which people experience it.

By social situations we mean situations inwhich people are or might become the focusof attention of others, as when they are en-gaged in a conversation, giving a speech, andso on. Such social interactions carry the pros-pect of interpersonal evaluation: people mak-ing judgments of one another. People canexperience social anxiety while imagining so-cial situations as well as when actually inthem.

The prospect of interpersonal evaluationand all it entails appears to distinguish socialanxiety from other forms of anxiety. In socialanxiety, people perceive a low likelihood ofobtaining satisfactory evaluations from oth-

ers. We propose that a perceived inability todeal successfully with the evaluative eventsinherent in social interaction precipitates so-cial anxiety. In other types of anxiety, as inpotentially harmful situations and situationscharacterized by disruption and disorder(nonsocial anxiety factors found by Strahan,1974), concerns about the evaluative actionsof others do not precipitate the experienceor become its major focus of attention. Forexample, one might fear walking through adark city street at night because of the dangerof being physically harmed by a mugger.Although one might loosely speak of a "so-cial" encounter with a mugger, the cause ofthe concern is physical harm, not the eval-uation of oneself by the mugger. One's anx-iety might be great, but we would not con-sider this a case of social anxiety.

Situations can include social and nonso-cial components. For instance, in the muggerexample, some people may be anxious be-cause of both the physical danger and con-cerns about evaluation by significant othersof their competence in dealing with such sit-uations (e.g., being seen as unable to protectoneself or as stupidly placing oneself indanger).

Approaches to Social Anxiety:Causes and Treatments

The existing literature on social anxietymay be roughly categorized into four majorapproaches (see Leary, 1982). The skills def-icit model assumes that anxiety experiencedin social situations is due to an inadequateor inappropriate repertoire of social skills(Bellack & Hersen, 1979;Curran, 1977). Theresulting mismanagement of social discourseby those with poor social skills produces aver-sive situations that elicit anxiety, both in theimmediate encounter and when future en-counters are imagined. Studies have shownthat social anxiety is often reduced by helpinganxious subjects improve their social skills(e.g., Bander, Steinke, Allen, & Mosher,1975; Bellack & Hersen, 1979; Cumin, 1977;Curran, Gilbert, & Little, 1976; TwentymanAMcFall, 1975).

Several investigators have noted that fewdeficits in important social skills have beenidentified among socially anxious individu-

SOCIAL ANXIETY 643

als, and the mere acquisition of new skillsdoes not always reduce anxiety (e.g., Ban-dura, 1969; Clark & Arkowitz, 1975). Thecognitive self-evaluation model states that so-cial anxiety results not from an objectiveskills deficit per se but from the individual'sperception of personal inadequacies (Rehm& Marston, 1968). Indeed, research hasshown that socially anxious people tend tounderestimate their social skills, rate them-selves more negatively, expect to performmore poorly socially, and regard others' re-actions to them as less positive even whenthey are not, than do nonanxious people(Cacioppo, Glass, & Merluzzi, 1979; Clark& Arkowitz, 1975; Gilkinson, 1943; Glass,Merluzzi, Biever, & Larsen, 1982; Smith &Sarason, 1975). Procedures designed to re-duce clients' negative self-evaluations are of-ten effective in reducing social anxiety (e.g.,Clark & Arkowitz, 1975; Kanter & Gold-fried, 1979; Meichenbaum, Gilmore, & Fe-doravicius, 1971; Rehm & Marston, 1968;Sherman, Mulac, & McCann, 1974),

The third approach, a classical condition-ing model, assumes that social anxiety is con-ditioned when neutral stimuli become pairedwith aversive social consequences (cf. Wolpe,1973). The strongest evidence in favor of theclassical conditioning approach is that sys-tematic desensitization has been shown to bequite effective in reducing social anxiety,both in children and adults (Bander et al.,1975; Fishman & Nawas, 1973; Kondas,1967; Mitchell & Orr, 1974).

Finally, many researchers have adopted apersonality trait approach, investigating in-dividual differences in the affective, cogni-tive, and behavioral concomitants of socialanxiety (e.g., Cacioppo et al., 1979; Clark& Arkowitz, 1975; Crozier, 1979; Leary, inpress). Factor analyses of personality traititems often obtain "social anxiety" factors,suggesting that social anxiousness might beregarded as a major trait (e.g., Cattell, 1973;Crozier, 1979; Layman, 1940). There is alsoevidence that shyness has an inherited com-ponent (Cattell, 1973), which suggests thatdispositional social anxiousness may have anunderpinning in temperament (Buss &Plomin, 1975).

Although it is generally recognized thateach of these four models has some explan-

atory power, their proponents often treatthem as rival hypotheses, and little attempthas been made to examine factors that un-derlie all cases of social anxiety. In short,what is the lowest common denominator ofinstances in which people experience socialanxiety?

Self-Presentation and Social Anxiety

Through aspects of their appearance andbehavior, people intentionally or uninten-tionally lay claim to particular self-imagesthat comprise their identities.1 These imagesare schemas of individuals and have impli-cations for how those individuals are definedand treated by themselves and others(Schlenker, 1980, in press-a, in press-b).Whenever people are in the presence of oth-ers, it is usually in their best interests to con-vey particular types of impressions (Goff-man, 1959; Jones & Pittman, 1982; Jones&Wortman, 1973; Schlenker, 1980,inpress-a, in press-b; Tedeschi, 1981). Some pro-jected images will make a desired impressionand result in desired reactions from others;other images will make undesired impres-sions and generate undesired reactions. Max-imizing one's reward/cost ratio in social lifeinvolves, in large part, control of the self-im-ages that are projected to others.

The Nature of Self-Presentation

Self-presentation is the attempt to controlimages of self before real or imagined audi-ences (Schlenker, 1980, in press-a, in press-b). It is a goal-directed act designed, at leastin part, to generate particular images of selfand thereby influence how audiences per-ceive and treat the actor.

The type of impression an actor wouldprefer to create must be denned in terms ofthe actor's other goals and self-beliefs in theparticular situation. Usually, people preferto present themselves in socially desirable

1 Identity is a theory constructed by oneself or othersabout how one is denned and regarded in social life(Schlenker, 1980, in press-a, in press-b). It can be viewedfrom the perspective of the actor, in which case it refersto how one thinks one is or should be denned and re-garded, or from the perspective of others, in which caseit refers to how they define and regard the actor.

644 BARRY R. SCHLENKER AND MARK R. LEARY

ways, such as by appearing reasonably com-petent, attractive, honest, and so forth. How-ever, a variety of self-presentations and ac-companying audience reactions can bestserve people's goals in specific situations(Hogan, in press; Jones & Pittman, 1982;Schlenker, 1980, in press-a). As examples,actors may attempt to present themselves inways that will achieve self-verification, liking,respect, fear, nurturance, or autonomy. Thetypes of impressions people prefer to createdepend on what they are trying to achieveand are affected by both personality and sit-uational factors (Hogan, in press; Schlenker,in press-a).

The perceived, anticipated, or imaginedreactions of others to the actor provide feed-back about whether the actor has created thedesired impression. If others respond in amanner commensurate with the intendedimpression, the actor has been successful inaccomplishing his or her self-presentationalgoal; if they do not, the actor has been un-successful. The importance of the reactionsof real or imagined audiences distinguishesself-presentational behavior from other be-havior. Although nearly all behavior can re-veal information about the actor, not all be-havior can be classified as self-presentation(Jones & Pittman, 1982; Schlenker, 1980, inpress-a). In self-presentational behavior theactor must have the goal of controlling howaudiences perceive the self, which means thatthe intended reaction of audiences is the cri-terion for assessing the effectiveness of thebehavior.

At the extremes, some behaviors seem tobe exclusively self-presentational, and othersdo not seem to contain any self-presenta-tional component. In the former case, peo-ple's only goal is to create a particular impres-sion on others. An example is the employeewhose remarks reflect only what he or shethinks the boss wants to hear and not his orher private views. In the latter case, peopleare unconcerned about projecting particularimages of self and the reaction of the audi-ence is irrelevant to their goals. An exampleis a person who is totally engrossed in per-forming some intellectual task and obliviousto the presence of others. Between these ex-tremes are cases in which people have severalgoals, and hence several criteria for deter-

mining how well the goals are being accom-plished, and one of the goals is to make aparticular impression on others. An exampleis an employee who is trying to accomplisha job-related task, but in a way that impressesthe employer. When several goals exist in asituation, the more important the self-pre-sentational goal is to the actor, the greaterthe actor's concern with the impression-rel-evant reactions of audiences (Schlenker, inpress-a, in press-b).

Self-presentation does not necessarily in-volve conscious deception (Schlenker, 1980,in press-a). In many cases, self-presentationinvolves bringing actual attributes or accom-plishments to the attention of others, perhapsby performing meritorious deeds in theirpresence and presenting veridical informa-tion in ways that could generate 'optimal ef-fects. In addition, self-presentation can re-flect nonconscious, habitual responses trig-gered by relevant social cues.

When people indicate they are concernedabout how others evaluate them or worryabout how well they will perform in socialsettings, they are indicating that they areaware of the relationship between their iden-tity and the reactions of others and that theywant to receive a particular reaction (i.e.,they have a self-presentational goal). Theirconcerns are self-presentational in nature.

Social Anxiety as a Function of Self-Presentational Problems

People are interpersonally secure in socialsettings when (a) they do not have the goalof creating a particular impression on othersand hence are not immediately concernedabout others' evaluative reactions or (b) theyare attempting to create a particular impres-sion and believe they will be successful indoing so. In a large percentage of social set-tings, however, people do not have such se-curity. Although they may want to create aparticular impression, they may (a) be un-certain about how to go about doing so (e.g.,it may be a novel situation or they may notknow what sort of attributes the others arelikely to be impressed with); (b) think theywill not be able to project the types of imagesthat will produce preferred reactions fromothers (e.g., they may want to be seen as com-

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petent but doubt they will be); (c) think theywill not project the quantity of the image theyseek (e.g., they think they will be seen asslightly competent but want to be seen asextremely competent); or (d) believe thatsome event will occur that will repudiatetheir self-presentations, causing them to losepublic esteem (e.g., they will fail an upcom-ing test after having bragged about their abil-ity). In short, despite their desire to create aparticular impression, they believe they willnot achieve the preferred impression-rele-vant reaction from others. These conditionsshould generate social anxiety.

Proposition 1. Social anxiety arises in realor imagined social situations when people aremotivated to make a particular impressionon others but doubt that they will do so, be-cause they have expectations of unsatisfactoryimpression-relevant reactions from others.When people have the goal of creating a par-ticular impression, either as an exclusive goalor in conjunction with other goals, we saythey are motivated to make a particularimpression on others. The more importantthe goal is, the greater the motivation will be(see below).

All goal-directed actions imply the exis-tence of standards for evaluating the degreeto which the action was successful in achiev-ing the goal. Actions that result in conse-quences that meet or exceed one's standardwill be regarded as satisfactory, whereas thosethat fail to meet the standard will producedissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction will increaseas the discrepancy between the performanceand the actor's standards increases and as thediscrepancy is relevant to more importantgoals or standards. The standards that arerelevant to self-presentation reflect the im-ages people would prefer to project. The per-ceived or imagined impression-relevant re-actions'of audiences serve as the feedbackpertinent to these standards and determinewhether people are satisfied or dissatisfiedwith their movement toward self-presenta-tional goals.

Individual differences in standards help toexplain why people who are, as judged byoutside observers, coming across well sociallymay still feel anxious. Given the same pos-itive reactions from others, people with low ,standards may feel quite satisfied, whereas

those with higher standards might feel dis-satisfied and socially anxious. Bandura (1969)notes that "many of the people who seektreatment [for anxiety] are neither incom-petent nor anxiously inhibited, but they ex-perience a great deal of personal distressstemming from excessively high standardsfor self-evaluation, often supported by un-favorable comparisons with models noted fortheir extraordinary achievements" (p. 37).

People will doubt that they will presentthemselves in ways that create preferredimpressions when they believe there is a lowprobability of obtaining satisfactory impres-sion-relevant reactions from pertinent audi-ences. If people perceive or imagine that thepertinent others have formed the preferredimpression (that is, their impression-relevantreactions are as they should be), they willhave accomplished their goal. We thus as-sume that people hold outcome expectanciesof the likelihood that their self-presentationalgoals will be accomplished.2 These outcomeexpectancies will be affected by the nature ofthe situation, pertinent audience, and theactor's perceived skills, attributes, and re-sources. The lower people's impression-rel-evant outcome expectancies are, the greatertheir doubts about creating a preferredimpression will be.

The perceived inability to predict, control,and obtain desired outcomes has been viewedas a major antecedent of anxiety (e.g., Sar-ason, 1978; Seligman, 1975). Such inabilityhas been hypothesized to generate self-preoc-cupation, self-derogation, and feelings ofhelplessness when outcomes are viewed ascontingent on behavior (Sarason, 1978;Wortman & Brehm, 1975). In the case ofsocial anxiety, the inability relates to the be-lief that one is unlikely to achieve a self-pre-sentational goal.

Proposition la. Given the goal of impress-ing audiences, the amount of social anxietyexperienced by people will be inversely re-lated to their outcome expectancies. The less

2 The concepts of outcome expectancies and stan-dards provide a common ground between the presentformulation of social anxiety and (a) social learning the-ory (e.g., Bandura, 1977)and (b) information processingmodels (e.g., Carver, 1979). These commonalities willbe considered in a later section.


likely people believe they are to receive thepreferred reaction from audiences, the moreanxiety they will experience.

Proposition Ib. Given the goal of impress-ing audiences, the amount of social anxietyexperienced by people will depend on the per-ceived discrepancy between the reactions ofaudiences and the standard. The greater thediscrepancy, the greater the anxiety will be.

Proposition Ic. Given a discrepancy, theamount of social anxiety experienced by peo-ple will depend on the importance of the goalor standard that is pertinent to the perfor-mance. The more important the goal orstandard is, the greater the anxiety will be.

Sullivan's Conceptualization of Anxiety

Sullivan's (1953) description of the genesisand nature of anxiety is compatible with thepresent analysis. According to Sullivan, theetiology of anxiety begins with the child'sencounters with the disapproval of signifi-cant others, such as parents or nurse. Thediscomfort associated with such encountersis what Sullivan called the early sensory formof anxiety. Once the self-concept has devel-oped, people can evaluate their own behav-iors from a social perspective and internallygenerate the praise or disapproval that wouldbe relevant. Ultimately, anxiety can be pro-duced by any sort of perceived failure or in-ability to predict and control environmentalevents, whether social or nonsocial. The in-terpersonal genesis of the experience perhapsexplains why it is marked by self-doubt, feel-ings of inadequacy, and self-blame: Thesecognitive responses are the internalized af-termath of the disapproval received fromothers. Concerns about the real or imagineddisapproval of others for one's identity havebeen mentioned frequently in subsequentanalyses of anxiety (e.g., Fischer, 1970).

Social anxiety offers the most direct par-allel to the types of experiences Sullivan de-scribed as underlying all anxiety. In socialanxiety, the salient feature is the threat ofunsatisfactory evaluations from audiences.In other forms of anxiety, as in the case ofanxiety from potentially harmful situations,concerns about one's ability to cope withprospective dangers are not seen as interper-sonal in origin. The disapproval and feelings

of inadequacy that are generated are per-ceived as self-evaluations that are divorcedfrom interpersonal evaluations, even thoughthe process of self-evaluation had its genesisin the social interaction process. For furtherdiscussion of the relationship between self-evaluations and evaluations by others, seeSchlenker (in press-a) and Snyder, Stucky,and Higgins (in press).

Antecedents of Social Anxiety

We will now turn to a further delineationof the major antecedents of social anxietyindicated in Proposition 1—the motivationto create a preferred impression and doubtsthat one will do so—along with an exami-nation of relevant research.

Motivation to Impress Others

It is proposed that a necessary but not suf-ficient condition for social anxiety is thatpeople be motivated to make a particularimpression on audiences. People who do nothave such a goal in the setting, and hence areunconcerned about prospective evaluations,will not feel socially anxious. Even when peo-ple do not begin a social interaction with sucha goal, events can occur that make interper-sonal evaluation salient, for example, peoplemight notice that others are giving cues sug-gesting disapproval, or they might commita faux pas that threatens their identities. Suchevents can shift attention from other goalsto the goal of creating a preferred impression.

The potential for experiencing social anx-iety will increase as the motivation to impressothers increases. If people also have lowimpression-relevant outcome expectancies,social anxiety will result. As suggested inProposition Ic, the motivation to impressothers will be a direct function of the im-portance of the pertinent goal or standard.Importance will be affected by (a) the sub-jective worth of the outcomes that are asso-ciated with the goal and (b) the centrality ofthe goal or standard, that is, the degree towhich it subsumes or satisfies other impor-tant goals or standards. A variety of audience,situational, and personal factors, alone or ininteraction, will affect such motivation and

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set the stage for the experience of social anx-iety.

Characteristics of others. Characteristicsof others that increase the subjective valueof the outcomes they might bestow will in-crease the motivation to impress them; wewill call these the strength of the others. Peo-ple who are powerful, esteemed, attractive,expert, or high in status can mediate a varietyof worthwhile outcomes. They can oftenmediate material gains or losses (e.g., pro-motions, raises, awards, dismissal, physicalharm); their approval, respect, friendship,and assistance are highly valued; and theiropinions are viewed as salient in confirmingor disconfirming one's purported strengthsor weaknesses. The motivation to impresssuch others is high.

The presence of these characteristics inothers can also affect the subjective likeli-hood of creating a satisfactory impression.High-strength others usually appear to bemore discerning and difficult to please (Te-deschi, Schlenker, & Bonoma, 1973) andmay evoke feelings of inadequacy on the partof the actor through the process of socialcomparison (Morse & Gergen, 1970). Thus,people will be more highly motivated to im-press such others and more likely to entertaindoubts that they will.

People are more likely to report beingtense and nervous when dealing with thosewho are powerful, competent, high in status,or in positions of authority than with thosewho are not (Jackson & Latane, 1981; Latane& Harkins, 1976; Zimbardo, 1977). Jonesand Russell (Note 1) found that nearly 80%of their subjects reported experiencing shy-ness when interacting with "authority fig-ures."Jackson and Latane (1981) asked sub-jects to imagine themselves singing the "StarSpangled Banner" in front of a variety ofdifferent audiences and rate how nervous andtense they were. High-strength others pro-duced more nervousness and tension thanlow-strength others. Similarly, people engagein more "face saving" behavior that appearsto be indicative of embarrassment when theaudience is composed of competent ratherthan incompetent others or "evaluators"rather than "nonevaluators" (Brown, 1970;Brown & Garland, 1971; Garland & Brown,1972).

Evaluative implications of the perfor-mance. Factors that increase the evaluativeimplications of a social performance shouldincrease the motivation to impress others.These include such conditions as the impor-tance of the performance, the anonymity ofthe actor, the number of coperformers pres-ent, and the size of the audience.

Some performances are more importantthan others in terms of their impact on theaudience's reactions. First impressions, forexample, usually generate a primacy effectthat can have a lingering influence on others'perceptions (e.g., Jones & Goethals, 1972).Thus, a first meeting with one's nance's par-ents would generate more motivation to im-press them than would a casual luncheonseveral months later. First dates also generateconsiderable concern for how one will appearand are usually mentioned by respondentsas inducing nervousness and shyness (Zim-bardo, 1977). As the evaluative overtonessurrounding a performance increase, so doesthe motivation to impress others. Leavy(Note 2) told subjects who believed they wereinteracting with another individual via anintercom either to "try to get the other sub-ject to like you" or simply to "act as naturallyas possible." Subjects who were instructed tomake a favorable impression reported feelingsignificantly more shy than those who werenot. McCoy (1965) found that telling chil-dren they would be working on a "test"rather than a "game" decreased their ver-balizations, and Gynther (1957) found thatarousing evaluation apprehension in collegestudents reduced their communication effi-ciency; these responses are usually associatedwith anxiety.

When people's behaviors are private andwill not come to the attention of others, lesssocial anxiety will be experienced than whenthe behaviors are public. People may, ofcourse, imagine how significant others wouldreact to their behavior and feel pride or anx-iety, but the experience would be somewhatmuted as compared with when significantothers are actually present (Schlenker, 1980).Although there has been relatively little re-search comparing anxiety experienced underpublic versus private conditions, there areindications that the hypothesized relationholds. Modigliani (1971) found that people


are less embarrassed and engage in less face-saving behavior under private than publicconditions of failure.

The number of coperformers present dur-ing an actor's social performance will alsoaffect the motivation to impress audiences.When people perform in groups, their au-dience must divide attention among the var-ious performers, each coperformer is some-what more anonymous, and the actors candiffuse responsibility among themselves forinferior performances (Jackson & Latane,1981). In support of the idea that there issafety in numbers, Jackson and Latane (1981)found that the number of coperformers de-creased nervousness and tension both in alaboratory situation where subjects imaginedthemselves performing before others and ina field study where people participated in atalent show. Similarly, Barber (1939) foundthat chronic stutterers exhibited more speechdisruptions, which presumably reflect ner-vousness, when reciting a passage alone thanwith groups of others; the greater the numberof coperformers, the fewer the disruptions.Each coperformer added to the situation,however, will have a smaller impact than theprevious coperformer (Jackson & Latane,1981). An exception to the tension-reducingeffect of coperformers may occur when peo-ple believe they will perform well but theircoperformers will perform poorly and therebyhide their meritorious contribution and makethem look bad.

The size of the audience will increase themotivation to impress them, at least up tosome asymptote. The evaluations of manypeople have the potential for greater impacton the actor than the evaluations of a few.Thus, people report being more tense andnervous as the size of their audience increases(Jackson & Latane, 1981; Latane & Harkins,1976). Porter (1939) found that stuttering,presumably a sign of nervousness, increasedwith audience size. Also, children speak lesswhen completing sentence stems if theyspeak before a larger than smaller audience(Levin, Baldwin, Gallwey, & Paivo, 1960),which suggests that they experience greatersocial anxiety with the larger audience. Eachadditional audience member, however,should have less of an impact than the pre-vious one (Jackson & Latane, 1981).

Image central ity. People will be moremotivated to create a preferred impressionon others when the interaction focuses onimages that are more rather than less centralto their identities. Creating a preferredimpression will not only allow them to re-ceive the interpersonal benefits (e.g., ap-proval, respect) associated with being viewedin these personally important ways, but willalso permit them to receive self-defining feed-back that could reduce any uncertainty theymight have about whether they really possessthese attributes. A woman who, for example,prides herself on being an intellectual butdoes not care about her athletic ability shouldbe more motivated to impress others whenengaged in an intellectual discussion thanwhen talking about her ability at tennis. So-cial anxiety should result, however, only ifshe also has doubts about whether she willcreate the preferred impression.

Self-attention. Self-attention appears toplay a crucial role in activating concernabout one's identity. Self-attention refers todirecting conscious attention inward, towardrather than away from the self (Buss, 1980;Carver, 1979;Duval & Wicklund, 1972; Fen-igstein, 1979; Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss,1975). Such a state can be situationally in-duced, and some people are chronically morelikely to focus attention on themselves.

When attention is focused inward, it canproduce either private or public self-con-sciousness. Private self-consciousness is anawareness of the internal self, such as one'sthoughts and feelings, and public self-con-sciousness is an awareness of oneself as a so-cial object (Fenigstein, 1979). Those who arepublicly self-conscious report that they feelas though they are being observed when inthe company of others, have a high awarenessof how others regard them, view others' be-haviors as having high personal relevance,and demonstrate increased responsiveness tonegative interpersonal evaluations (Fenig-stein, 1979). In addition, it has been hypoth-esized that a "major consequence of self-con-sciousness is an increased concern with thepresentation of self and the reactions of oth-ers to that presentation" (Fenigstein, 1979,p. 75). Those who are not publicly self-con-scious, on the other hand, have little aware-ness of or interest in how they are coming

SOCIAL ANXIETY 649

across to others. Since evaluation is moresalient when people are publicly self-con-scious, they should be more motivated tomake a preferred impression on those withwhom they interact. Even so, they should notfeel socially anxious unless they also doubtthey will receive satisfactory impression-rel-evant reactions from others. Fenigstein et al.(1975) similarly suggest that public self-con-sciousness is a necessary but not sufficientprecondition for social anxiety.

Chronic public self-consciousness is sig-nificantly positively correlated with generalmeasures of social anxiety (Fenigstein et al.,1975; Pilkonis, 1977a; Leavy, Note 2). It hasalso been found to be positively correlatedwith general measures of shyness (Cheek &Buss, 1982), social reticence (Jones & Rus-sell, Note 3), interaction anxiousness (Leary,in press), audience anxiousness (Leary, inpress), and embarrassment (Froming &Brody, Note 4). In addition, it correlates sig-nificantly with self-reports of shyness (Pil-konis, 1977a; Leavy, Note 2) and anxiety(Leavy, Note 2) in specific dyadic encounters.Levin et al. (1960) found that children whowere classified as highly self-conscious spokefor a shorter length of time in front of anunfamiliar audience and made more speecherrors seemingly indicative of anxiety thanthose who were classified as low in self-con-sciousness. Although these studies are cor-relational in nature, there are at least somegrounds for suggesting that public self-con-sciousness increases people's potential forbecoming socially anxious.3

People who are chronically high in publicself-consciousness may also be somewhatmore likely to entertain doubts about theirself-presentational abilities across a wide va-riety of situations. Fenigstein (1979) sug-gested that public self-consciousness in-creases concerns about receiving negative in-terpersonal evaluations, and Leavy (Note 2)found public self-consciousness to be nega-tively related to self-esteem (r = —.29,p < .02).

Self-attention increases the actor's focuson meeting salient standards for perfor-mance, leading to a comparison between theself and the standard (Carver, 1979; Duval& Wicklund, 1972). When people adopt self-presentational goals, the standards for their

performance reflect their effectiveness in pro-curing satisfactory impression-relevant re-actions from others. If people believe theyare meeting or will meet the standards (i.e.,they have a favorable outcome expectancy),they experience positive affect. However, thebelief that "one cannot alter one's behaviorin the direction appropriate to the standardmay also lead to negative affect in proportionto the importance of the behavioral dimen-sion or the standard and the perceived mag-nitude of the discrepancy" (Carver, 1979, p.1266). In terms of the present approach, self-attention should make extant self-presenta-tional problems more salient and produce thetype of negative affect associated with anxi-ety. Further, self-attention should make peo-ple more aware of internal states, includingtheir thoughts and affect, and intensify them(Carver, 1979). This could further heightenthe experience of social anxiety.

Other personality variables. Any individ-ual difference factors that heighten the mo-tivation to impress others have the potentialfor generating social anxiety. These includesuch variables as high needs for social ap-proval (Crowne & Marlowe, 1964), other-directedness (Hogan & Cheek, in press), andhigh fear of negative evaluation (Watson &Friend, 1969). People who are other-directedor want to gain approval/avoid disapprovalshould be highly motivated to come acrosswell to others. Further, people who score highin the need for approval seem to lack the"confidence, assertiveness, and skill to makethe most of social situations" (Schlenker,1980, p. 79). Thus, such people should.haveboth high motivation and be more likely toentertain doubts about their abilities to makedesired impressions, generating greater socialanxiety.

A high fear of negative evaluation (FNE)also has been associated with a need to obtainapproval and avoid disapproval (Friend &Gilbert, 1973; Smith & Campbell, 1973;Watson & Friend, 1969; Leary, 1980). In

3 Public and private self-consciousness are only weaklycorrelated with one another, and the latter usually hasnot been found to correlate significantly with measuresof anxiety (for an exception, see Jones & Russell, Note3). It appears that a focus of attention on oneself as asocial object is important for the experience of socialanxiety.


addition, Leavy (Note 2) found that subjectswho scored high as compared with low inFNE reported more doubts about their abil-ities to create a favorable impression on oth-ers, and FNE was negatively correlated withself-esteem (;• = -.55, p < .001). It should beexpected, then, that FNE should generallyincrease social anxiety. Indeed, Leavy (Note2) found that FNE is significantly correlatedwith self-reports of anxiety (r = .48, p < .001)and shyness (r = .42, p < .001) during adyadic encounter and with scores on the So-cial Anxiety subscale of the Self-Conscious-ness Scale (r = .65,;; < .001). Fear of negativeevaluation has also been found to correlatepositively with social avoidance and distress(Watson & Friend, 1969) and self-reports ofinteraction and audience anxiousness (Leary,in press). Finally, Nicholls (1974) found thatthe most common characteristic of hospital-ized socially phobic individuals is sensitive-ness to and fearfulness of disapproval.

Low Outcome Expectancies

Given the goal of making a particularimpression on others, people will becomesocially anxious to the extent that they doubtthey will do so. Such doubts will be generatedwhen (a) people are uncertain about how todo so, or (b) although people believe theyknow how such an impression can be cre-ated, their perceptions of the situation, au-dience, and their own attributes, skills, andresources lead them to believe they cannotachieve the goal. People will then perceiveor imagine a discrepancy between their per-formances and the relevant standards. Asproposed in Propositions la and Ib, thelower their outcome expectancies and thegreater the perceived discrepancy betweenperformance and standard, the more sociallyanxious they will feel.

Uncertainty. When people are motivatedto impress others they access informationfrom memory or seek information regardingthe ways the others are likely to respond toparticular self-presentations. They then pre-sent their self-presentations in a way that cap-italizes (at least somewhat) on the others'preferences and the situational contingenciesthat are relevant to their goals (Schlenker,1980, in press-a). Difficulties arise whenguides to self-presentation—such as situa-

tional cues, information about others' pref-erences, and familiarity with accepted waysof responding—are absent, ambiguous, orcontradictory. People should then becomeuncertain about how to respond and expe-rience doubts about whether they will obtainsatisfactory impression-relevant reactions.

Uncertainty has been proposed as a majorantecedent of anxiety. Dibner (1958, p. 165)observed that "anxiety is directly related tothe degree of ambiguity in the situation towhich the individual must make some ad-justive reaction." Pilkonis (1977b) noted that"shyness is less of a problem in those contextswhere influences such as task demands androle requirements remove the ambiguitypresent in 'unfocused' interpersonal encoun-ters" (p. 604), and Buss (1980) commentedthat "the most frequent and important sit-uational cause [of shyness] appears to be nov-elty" (p. 187). Phillips (1968) suggested thatchronic reticence may be caused by actors'"not knowing the rules" in certain social sit-uations.

Self-reports of social anxiety (includingshyness) have been found to increase in noveland unstructured situations and in encoun-ters with people about whom the actor knowsrelatively little (Pilkonis, 1977b; Zimbardo,1977; Jones & Russell, Note 3; Leary, 1980).Such situations make it difficult for peopleto formulate a plan for behavior and to pre-dict how others will react to them. Con-versely, reports of anxiety or shyness rarelyoccur in familiar situations, particularly thoseinvolving friends and family (Zimbardo,1977).

Uncertainty is also heightened when un-expected events occur, as when an embar-rassing incident happens or people are inter-acting with others who are unpredictable.Unexpected events disrupt the ongoing in-teraction and thrust the participants into astate of uncertainty (Goffman, 1967). Geller,Goodstein, Silver, and Sternberg (1974) foundthat when others violate the implicit rules ofsocial interaction—by ignoring an individ-ual, for example—the situation becomes am-biguous and the individual reports feel-ing shy.

The clearest examples of uncertainty occurwhen people lack a coherent script or planfor the social setting. Such might be the caseat one's first school dance, first formal dinner

SOCIAL ANXIETY 651

party, and so on. There are questions in themind of the actor: What should I do? Whathappens next? How will others react to me?Awkward, tentative interactions are likely tooccur that may further heighten the actor'sanxiety. There are many occasions whenpeople know how they would like to appearbut do not know how to go about doing so.Their cognitive schemas for the situation donot contain adequate response-specifying in-formation. For instance, people who are un-skilled in the rules of etiquette and lackingexperience in formal social settings mayknow that they want to appear sophisticatedat a formal cocktail party but have no ideahow to go about fostering that image.

In such cases, anxiety would be reducedby instructing people about (a) the sequenceof events to be expected, (b) the behaviorsthat should be employed given certain goalsand antecedent conditions, and (c) the likelyresponses of others to particular behaviors.Therapy aimed at increasing social skills of-ten provides such instruction, either directlyor through modeling. Similarly, self-helpcourses on how to win friends, be successfulin business, be assertive, and so forth usuallyprovide people with lists of simple rulesabout what to do in various situations. Somesuch rules are undoubtedly effective in ac-complishing their objective of increasingknowledge or skills. Equally or even moreimportant, though, should be the increasedconfidence experienced by people who learnthe rules; they now possess a set of specificinstructions. They should believe in theirability to predict and control others' reac-tions, and social anxiety should decrease. Ofcourse, any initial increment in confidencecould later be eliminated if people discoveredthat their new-found instructions did notreally aid them in predicting and controllingsocial situations.

Individual difference variables can exac-erbate the problems encountered in ambig-uous situations and heighten social anxiety.Factors that make people less sensitive to so-cial cues (e.g., low social sensitivity), moredependent on the rules and preferences ofothers (e.g., other-directedness), or morelikely to anticipate that other people willevaluate them negatively (e.g., low self-es-teem, fear of negative evaluation) will pre-dispose them to perceive more situations as

ambiguous or experience lower outcome ex-pectancies when they encounter ambiguousor novel situations.

Low outcome expectancies in the absenceof uncertainty. People may perceive whatshould be done in order to obtain satisfactoryreactions from others but still doubt that theywill be likely to achieve their self-presenta-tional goals. Low outcome expectancies of-ten arise when people believe they do notpossess the attributes, skills, accomplish-ments, or resources that are required to makea successful claim to the relevant image. Allimages have requirements, which are thecharacteristics, achievements, and behaviorsthat a holder of the image should have or beable to perform in order to claim the imagelegitimately (Schlenker, 1980). People whofail to live up to the requirements of the im-ages they project are disliked and negativelysanctioned (Goffman, 1959; Schlenker, 1980;Schlenker & Leary, 1982). Because of theseconstraints, people's public self-presentationsare usually consistent with publicly-knowninformation about them (Baumeister & Jones,1978; Schlenker, 1975). People who thinkthey should claim a particular image in orderto impress the audience but believe they can-not live up to such claims are caught in aleast-of-evils choice situation. If they try toclaim the image, they expect failure, yet ifthey do not make the claim, they will notcreate the preferred impression. Social anx-iety results.

People may also privately think of them-selves as having certain attractive attributesthat would impress others but doubt thatthey can convince others they possess theseattributes (Leary & Schlenker, 1981). Forexample, a scientist who wishes to demon-strate his or her extensive knowledge to col-leagues at a convention may feel he or shelacks the verbal fluency to impress them. Insuch cases, people may think their self-pre-sentations will be ineffective because of de-ficiences in their expressive skills, even thoughthey might privately believe they possess thecharacteristics that could impress the audi-ence. Their expectations of unsatisfactoryimpression-relevant reactions could generatesocial anxiety.

Being overpraised by others can carry asmany negative implications for the recipientas failing to receive sufficient praise. Buss


(1980, pp. 138-140) notes that being over-praised in public produces discomfort; fe-males who were overpraised by a confederateresponded by showing signs of embarrass-ment, including blushing and nervous gig-gling. Unlike praise that is merited, excessivepraise can raise doubts in the recipient'smind about the motives of the evaluator (e.g.,"Is he serious, or is he trying to make a foolof me?"), create uncertainty about how torespond, and thrust an excessively attractiveimage on the recipient. Recipients might be-lieve they cannot fulfill the extremely highstandards for performance implied by the im-age and may envision considerable discrep-ancy between their future performances andthe standard. A likely reaction is to reject theexcessive praise: "That's nice of you to say,but I'm really not that accomplished, nice,or whatever." They thereby escape the obli-gation of living up to the image and appearless foolish if the evaluator is insincere. Re-search suggests that people will reject exces-sive praise when the evaluator's motives aresuspect or they believe they cannot live upto the implications of the praise (Jones, 1973;Mettee & Aronson, 1974).

A good deal of research has documentedthe relation between the belief that one lacksvaluable social skills and the experience ofsocial anxiety (Bellack & Hersen, 1979; Leary,1982). In an early study of public speaking,Gilkinson (1943) found that anxious speechstudents greatly underestimated their speak-ing ability and the quality of their speechesas compared with observers' evaluations ofthem. Efran and Korn (1969) showed thatsocially "cautious" subjects held lower ex-pectations of success on a variety of socialand verbal tasks than socially "bolder" sub-jects but that the two groups did not differin their expectations of success on intellec-tual, artistic, or athletic pursuits. This sug-gests that the concerns of socially anxiouspeople are specific to relevant social defi-ciencies. Paivo and Lambert (1959) showedthat the susceptibility to audience anxiety inpublic speaking is negatively related to thefrequency of rewarding past experiences inspeaking situations. In a comparison of highand low socially anxious subjects, Cacioppoet al. (1979) found that the former ratedthemselves more negatively, generated more

negative self-statements in a thought-listingtask, and rated themselves as less potent andactive than less anxious subjects. Similarly,Glass et al. (1982) showed that socially anx-ious women made significantly more nega-tive and fewer positive self-statements in adyadic encounter than women low in social .anxiety.

Anxious people's negative evaluations areconfined primarily to themselves. Althoughthey underestimate the quality of their socialskills (compared with observers' ratings ofthem and with the self-evaluations of peoplewith low anxiety), high- and low-anxioussubjects (along with external observers) havebeen shown to agree in their appraisals of aconfederate's social ability (Clark & Arkow-itz, 1975). Thus, the tendency to underesti-mate social performances is not due to a gen-eralized set to see the social world negativelybut appears to result from a real or imagineddeficit in personal skills or attributes.

People who consider themselves to bephysically unattractive may entertain doubtsabout their ability to achieve satisfactory re-actions from others (Berscheid & Walster,1974). Although no research has specificallyexamined the relationship between self-per-ceived attractiveness and social anxiety,Mathes and Kahn (1975) found that physi-cally attractive women rated themselves asless neurotic, higher in self-esteem, and hap-pier than did less attractive women. In ad-dition to the direct effects of self-perceivedattractiveness on social anxiety, truly unat-tractive individuals (as judged by the stan-dards of those with whom they interact) arelikely to be regarded less favorably by otherson a number of personality and social di-mensions (e.g., Berscheid & Walster, 1974)and thus be afforded fewer opportunities forsocial interaction. The result is that they mayhave fewer opportunities to learn and prac-tice interpersonal skills (on dates, for exam-ple), opportunities that could otherwise buildsocial confidence and reduce anxiety.

People with low self-esteem, who tend toperceive themselves less favorably than thosewith high self-esteem on a variety of dimen-sions and assume others do also, experiencesocial anxiety across a variety of social set-tings. In support of this hypothesis, Gilkin-son (1942) noted that "a somewhat gener-

SOCIAL ANXIETY 653

alized sense of inferiority is a primary causeof fear experienced before an audience" (p.81). Zimbardo (1977) reports that self-esteemand shyness are significantly negatively cor-related (r = -.48), and Leary (in press) foundself-esteem to correlate negatively with bothinteraction and audience anxiousness.

Self-presentational difficulties are an in-terpersonal problem, so the context of thesituation and the characteristics of the au-dience should interact with personal char-acteristics to affect situational reactions. Forexample, a high school athlete may have highself-esteem and believe his or her athleticskills would favorably impress a peer oryounger person, but still doubt his or herability to impress a college scout or profes-sional athlete. Audiences who are perceivedas especially competent, powerful, or criticalshould generate lower outcome expectanciesand evoke higher standards than ones whoare easier to impress (Schlenker, in press-a).Indeed, people report greater tension andnervousness (Jackson & Latane, 1981) andengage in more face-saving behavior indic-ative of embarrassment (Brown & Garland,1971; Garland & Brown, 1972) when theyperceive themselves to be less rather thanmore competent at the specific task and whenthey are performing before competent ratherthan incompetent others. The amount ofsupportive feedback one receives during aninteraction also affects expectations of suc-cess and hence anxiety. As compared withwarm, supportive, noncritical audiences, cold,nonsupportive, or critical ones produceshorter interactions and fewer words spoken(Drennen & Wiggins, 1964; Pope & Siegman,1968; Reece, 1964; Reece & Whitman, 1962).Subjects who receive negative interpersonalfeedback speak less and with longer speechlatencies (Cervin, 1956; Miller, 1964; Taylor,Altman, & Sorrentino, 1969) and are lessself-disclosing (Taylor et al., 1969).

Even people who have low self-esteem,who have perceived skills deficits, or who tell"lies" about themselves should not feel so-cially anxious as long as they expect that theirself-presentations will produce the desiredreactions from others. People might, for ex-ample, believe that their audience is espe-cially supportive, gullible, or has no way tocheck the veracity of their claims. On such

occasions people should have high expecta-tions of achieving their self-presentationalgoals.

Self-presentation and alternative ap-proaches. The skills deficit, cognitive eval-uation, conditioning, and personality ap-proaches can be reconceptualized as con-verging on the notion that social anxiety isgenerated when people are motivated to im-press others and hold low impression-rele-vant outcome expectancies. Despite this sim-ilarity, there are several differences betweenthese approaches and the present formula-tion that are worth noting. First, in contrastto some versions of the conditioning ap-proach, the present formulation adopts a cog-nitive perspective: Anxiety is mediated byexpectations about self-presentational effec-tiveness. Bandura (1977) and Bolles (1972)present strong cases for the superiority of"conditioning" models that include ratherthan exclude cognitive variables.

Second, this formulation states that socialanxiety is produced by the expectation thatone will not accomplish one's self-presenta-tional goal of impressing real or imaginedaudiences. The multitude of negative self-statements people might make and that ap-pear in studies that support the cognitive self-evaluation model (e.g., "I'm not a good date/speaker/dancer/conversationalist/etc.") re-flect not only self-evaluations but also con-cerns about how one might be judged in so-cial settings.

Third, and related to this distinction, realor perceived skills deficits will only affect so-cial anxiety to the extent that they influencethe individual's expectations of receiving sat-isfactory impression-relevant reactions fromothers in the specific social situation. Simi-larly, personality variables that are associatedwith generalized expectations of poor self-presentational performances (e.g., low self-esteem, high fear of negative evaluation) willbe related to social anxiety only to the extentthat they affect motivation and expectationsin the specific social situation.

In summary, people will experience socialanxiety to the degree that they have the goalof creating a preferred impression on othersbut doubt they will do so. Existing researchin the area is consistent with this proposition.Variables that appear to affect the motivation


to impress others and the likelihood of doingso affect social anxiety.

Social Anxiety and Interpersonal Behavior

A variety of behaviors have been asso-ciated with high social anxiety, such as reti-cence, hesitant words and acts, minimal self-disclosure, and withdrawal from encountersthat precipitate anxiety. After examiningsome of these behaviors, we will consider therelationships among cognition, social anxi-ety, and behavior.

Associated Behaviors

The behaviors that tend to occur whenpeople feel socially anxious may be looselygrouped into three classes: nervous respon-ses, disaffiliative behaviors, and image pro-tection. When people feel socially anxious,they manifest a variety of nervous responses.They often fidget, self-manipulate (play withtheir hair, clothes, etc.), perspire, squirm,stutter as they speak, and generally appearnervous and jittery (Cheek & Buss, 1982;Porter, 1939; Pilkonis, 1977b; Zimbardo,1977). Speech disturbances (e.g., stuttering,stumbling over words, repeating words, etc.)have been used as indices for assessing anx-iety in psychotherapeutic settings (Kasl &Mahl, 1965; Mahl, 1956). High levels of anx-iety impair the ability to communicate ef-fectively (Borkovec, Stone, O'Brien, & Kal-oupek, 1974; Kasl & Mahl, 1965; Murray,1971; Pilkonis, 1977b; Swartz, 1976). Forexample, stammering increases as a functionof audience size (Porter, 1939), and whenreciting passages alone (where one is the cen-ter of attention), rather than with others(Barber, 1939).

Social anxiety is also associated with dis-affiliation—behaviors that decrease the ac-tor's social contact with others. When so-cially anxious, people initiate conversationsless frequently, are more reluctant to speakfreely, speak for a lower percentage of thetime and, in general, participate less fully inconversations (Cheek & Buss, 1982; Borko-vec, Fleischmann, & Caputo, 1973; Glasgow& Arkowitz, 1975; Leary, 1980; Zimbardo,1977). In a review of the literature dealingwith the relationship between anxiety andspeech, Murray (1971) concluded that anx-

iety and speech productivity (verbal quantity,speech rate, absence of silences) are curvilin-early related as an inverse-U function. Verbalproductivity increases with increasing anxi-ety up to some asymptote and then decreaseswith increasingly higher levels of anxiety.This conclusion was reached after an ex-amination of studies that employed situa-tional inducements of social anxiety (e.g.,negative evaluations from others, increasedevaluation apprehension) and nonsocial anx-iety (e.g., threat of electric shock), as well asdispositional measures of social and generalanxiety. More recently, Pilkonis (1977b) hadsubjects who were previously classified as shyor not shy converse in an unstructured, het-erosexual interaction and then prepare anddeliver structured speeches. During the con-versation, shy people showed a longer latencyto their first utterance, spoke less frequentlyand for shorter periods of time, and allowedlonger silences to occur and were less willingto break them. Shy subjects also reportedgreater anxiety during delivery of the struc-tured speeches and were viewed as more anx-ious by observers.

In addition to reduced verbal interaction,the disaffiliation that often accompanies so-cial anxiety has been shown to take a numberof other forms. For example, people tend toavoid situations that produce embarrassment(Brown, 1970; Brown & Garland, 1971) orinvolve specific ego threats (Teichman, 1978)and prefer not to affiliate with evaluative oth-ers under such conditions (Fish, Karabenick,& Heath, 1978; Sarnoff& Zimbardo, 1961;Teichman, 1973, 1978; Watson & Friend,1969). Also, people tend to avoid situationsin which they expect to experience socialdifficulties and prematurely leave those thatelicit social anxiety (Cheek & Buss, 1982;Pilkonis, 1977b;Twentyman&McFall, 1975;Zimbardo, 1977). The tendency to maintaindistance from others is also suggested by find-ings that socially anxious people decrease eyecontact with others (Modigliani, 1971; Pil-konis, 1977b; Zimbardo, 1977), disclose lessinformation about themselves to others (Post,Wittmaier, & Radin, 1978), and are generallyless sociable (Cheek & Buss, 1982) than non-anxious people. As a result of their tendencyto disaffiliate, shy people report a higher in-cidence of loneliness (Cheek & Busch, 1981;

SOCIAL ANXIETY 655

Jones & Russell, Note 3). Heterosexuallyanxious individuals are less likely to date(Twentyman & McFall, 1975) and are lesslikely to become involved in romanticand sexual encounters (Leary & Dobbins,Note 5).

Finally, social anxiety seems to be accom-panied by behaviors that allow people to pro-tect their public images as best they can giventhe perceived difficulties (Leary, 1982; Leary& Schlenker, 1981). For example, Natale,Entin, and Jaffe (1979) found that social anx-iety was negatively correlated with successfulverbal interruptions of others and positivelycorrelated with back-channel responses, thatis, the brief interjections a listener makeswhile another is speaking to indicate he orshe is listening attentively (e.g., "uh-huh").Pilkonis (1977b) found that shy females nod-ded and smiled more during an opposite-sex,unstructured interaction than not-shy fe-males (males, however, did not display suchdifferences). These sorts of behaviors (not in-terrupting, attentively listening, nodding,smiling) may allow people to show polite butinnocuous sociability in situations in whichthey doubt they can make a truly positiveimpression on others (Leary, 1982; Leary& Schlenker, 1981).

Cognition, Anxiety, and Behavior

Some early conceptualizations took theposition that anxiety is a drive or arousalstate that energizes particular responses (e.g.,Spence, 1960; see Levitt, 1967). Althoughthere are many variations on this theme anddifferences between specific theories, it wasgenerally held that behavior (defensive be-havior and task performance) is a direct con-sequence of the drive condition. Conse-quently, some theorists searched for invari-ant relationships between arousal andbehavior (e.g., the inverted-U relation). Morerecent research challenges that position andfocuses attention on cognitive processes thatmediate both arousal and behavior (Ban-dura, 1977; Carver, 1979).

According to social learning theory, arousaland behavior are coeffects and are not causallylinked: "Being coeffects, there is no fixed re-lationship between autonomic arousal andactions" (Bandura, 1977, p. 209). Bandura

suggests that people's level and strength ofself-efficacy, or the expectation that they cansuccessfully execute the behavior required toproduce desired outcomes, determineswhether coping will be initiated in a situa-tion, how much effort will be expended, andhow long effort will be sustained in the faceof obstacles. From our perspective, peoplewho are experiencing social anxiety have lowexpectations regarding their ability to pro-duce preferred impression-relevant reactionsfrom others. These expectations usually pro-duce an avoidance of relevant social situa-tions and a lack of effective behavior in suchsituations. Any arousal experienced as a con-sequence of threats to one's identity can in-tensify perceptions of low self-efficacy, sincesuch internal states might support or inten-sify beliefs in one's own deficiencies. Thus,we view the arousal and affect that can ac-company social anxiety and the behaviorsthat are associated with social anxiety asmediated by cognitive activities.

Carver's (1979) cybernetic model of self-attention processes contains several propo-sitions that are directly relevant to our con-ceptualization of social anxiety. As indicatedearlier, Carver proposes that self-attentionincreases people's concerns about meetingstandards for behavior (cf. Duval & Wick-lund, 1972). The goal of creating a particularimpression on others should often be accom-panied by self-attention (Buss, 1980; Fenig-stein, 1979). A "matching-to-standard" pro-cess, in which the actor attempts to createthe sort of impression implied by the goal,should occur. Carver suggests that

If something impedes the matching-to-standard process,behavior is interrupted and an assessment process isevoked. This assessment entails the further processingof relevant information yielding an outcome expectancy:an estimate of the likelihood of being able to moreclosely approximate the standard, based on the natureof the situation and on the behaviors available to theperson, (p. 1264).

Proposition 2. An assessment process istriggered when the self-presentational goal isimportant to the individual or the social per-formance is impeded. As the importance ofthe performance increases, people will be-come more highly motivated to make a pre-ferred impression on others. To facilitate goalachievement, they will engage in a more de-


tailed examination of self, audience, and sit-uation than would otherwise occur. Further,if events suggest possible difficulties in reach-ing their goal (irrespective of an initial as-sessment that might have been triggered bygoal importance), assessment will -occur orreoccur.

The assessment process can be triggeredin advance, before entering the social setting.Factors that presage self-presentational dif-ficulties (e.g., a powerful, critical, discerningaudience), create uncertainty, or make peo-ple conscious of the import of the perfor-mance will produce assessment prior to theanticipated encounter. Similarly, people whocould be labeled "chronically socially anx-ious" might have generalized doubts abouttheir self-presentational abilities and engagein assessment prior to even relatively innoc-uous interactions.

One interesting implication of this prop-osition concerns the relation between verylow levels of anxiety and poor social perfor-mance. According to the inverted-U func-tion, very low levels of anxiety should gen-erate poorer performances than somewhathigher levels of anxiety and produce less so-cial efficiency. Many of the variables thatgenerate low social anxiety, however, are alsothose that minimize concerns about how oneis appearing to others (e.g., insignificant au-diences, low fear of negative evaluation, easytasks). Such variables will (a) be less likelyto evoke self-presentational goals, (b) reduceself-attention, causing goal-relevant stan-dards to be less salient, or (c) be less likelyto trigger assessment either prior to or duringthe social encounter. The result will be be-havior that is .not optimally effective in gen-erating desirable impressions. An extremecase is those people who, after 20 years ofmarriage, are unconcerned about theirspouses' evaluations (Schlenker, in press-a).They take the spouse for granted, are lesssensitive than formerly to social cues indi-cating appropriate behaviors, fail to employstandards for their behaviors that they woulduse when interacting with other people, andfail to monitor and control their own actionsin desirable ways (e.g., allowing their physicalappearance to decline, not paying attentionto what they or their spouses are saying, notfollowing normal rules of courtesy, etc.). So-

cial performance is poor not because of theabsence of social anxiety but because of thecognitive orientation the person brings to thetask.

Proposition 3. If the assessment leads tothe expectation that one can create the pre-ferred impression on others, the individualwill continue to work toward that objective.In addition, he or she will experience positiveaffect. This proposition paraphrases Carver's(1979) Propositions 1 la and 12b, makingthem pertinent to self-presentation. Socialanxiety, if it occurred at all under such con-ditions, would be limited to the brief periodduring which the assessment process was tak-ing place and uncertainty might be present.Once people develop a favorable outcomeexpectancy, social anxiety will not occur. Inaddition, people will experience positive af-fect and be satisfied with their social perfor-mances.

One of the interesting implications of thisproposition is that self-attention can, undersome conditions, facilitate the performanceof people who are chronically anxious(Carver, 1979, p. 1266). If such people en-counter a situation that allows them to con-clude they can accomplish their self-presen-tational goal successfully, self-attention willimprove rather than impede their social per-formance. Self-attention makes standardsmore salient and produces greater behavior-standard matching than would occur withoutself-attention. Indeed, research has shownthat self-attention facilitates the perfor-mances of people who are described aschronically anxious but who have favorableoutcome expectancies in the specific situa-tion (Carver, 1979, p. 1266). This predictiondoes not seem to follow from alternative con-ceptualizations of anxiety, according to whichself-attention should only increase chroni-cally anxious people's self-preoccupation andfurther debilitate their performances (e.g.,Wine, 1971).

Variables that make people more likely toadopt self-presentational goals and triggerassessment have the potential for increasingself-presentational effectiveness, providedpeople do not expect unfavorable impres-sion-relevant outcomes. Coincidentally, suchvariables are often associated with moderatelevels of social anxiety, the asymptotic point

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on the inverted-U curve for anxiety and be-havior; for example, tests of moderate diffi-culty or audiences with intermediate status.Because of the potentially facilitating con-sequences of self-attention and internalarousal, some people prepare themselvesmentally prior to social performances in afashion analogous to what athletes do priorto a big game. People who believe they cando well should try to evoke self-attention andarousal before important social perfor-mances. Once again, social performancewould not be facilitated because of the socialanxiety, but because of the cognitive orien-tation that accompanies the sorts of condi-tions that typically create moderate anxiety.

Proposition 4. If the assessment leads tothe expectation that one cannot create thepreferred impression on others, the responsewill be withdrawal Also, the individual willexperience negative affect. This propositionparaphrases Carver's (1979) Propositions 11 band 12a. Social anxiety occurs in such situ-ations, and people will avoid the social sit-uation if doing so is possible or physicallywithdraw from the situation if an exit can bearranged without incurring excessive socialcosts.

People appear to avoid, if possible, affili-ating with specific others when they are con-cerned about impressing them and doubtthey will receive satisfactory impression-rel-evant reactions. Social anxiety is associatedwith avoidance of and premature withdrawalfrom identity-threatening, anxiety-producingsocial settings (e.g., Brown, 1970; Brown &Garland, 1971; Buss, 1980; Cheek & Buss,1982; Fish et al., 1978; Garland & Brown,1972; Pilkonis, 1977b; Sarnoff & Zimbardo,1961; Sattler, 1965; Schlenker, 1980; Teich-man, 1978; Watson & Friend, 1969; Zim-bardo, 1977). The personal consequences ofthe unwillingness to interact fully with othersare considerable, since such unwillingnesscan preclude the formation of satisfying re-lationships, hamper the acquisition of inter-personal skills through experience, and resultin negative attributions about one's socialinadequacies. *

People who are socially anxious will seekto affiliate with others whom they believethey can impress or who otherwise pose nothreat to their identities. Affiliation with care-

fully selected, supportive others can providesocial comparison information that allowsanxious people to assess the appropriatenessof their feelings and thoughts. Studies show-ing that fear and anxiety sometimes increaseaffiliation (e.g., Schachter, 1959; Teichman,1978) invariably involve threats that do notdirectly jeopardize people's social identities,for example, the threat of receiving electricshocks. Jackson and Latane (1981) suggestthat chronically anxious people should seekout coperformers because doing so allowsthem to diffuse responsibility for the poten-tial failure, hide in the crowd, minimize theirown participation, and obtain moral support.Thus, socially anxious people (either dispo-sitionally or situationally) should affiliatewith others they expect to impress but avoidthose they expect not to impress.

Avoiding or withdrawing from anxiety-producing social situations is not always pos-sible. Coexisting pressures (e.g., job demands,social responsibilities) may make the situa-tion unavoidable, and there may be no wayof exiting gracefully (without incurring severesocial costs). When this occurs, people willcognitively withdraw, mentally dissociatingthemselves from the task at hand—that ofcreating a preferred impression on the au-dience (cf. Carver, 1979). People may thendaydream about more preferred activities oroutcomes. Such task-irrelevant cognitive ac-tivity should reduce people's sensitivity toand utilization of relevant task cues, andimpede self-monitoring and the control oftask-relevant actions.

Proposition 5, If withdrawal is not possible,people become trapped in the assessmentstage, reexamining themselves and the situ-ation and replaying the problems they con-front. This proposition (cf. Carver, 1979,p. 1266) accounts for the self-preoccupationthat is often associated with high anxiety.Anxious people have been described as self-focused: concentrating on their own imper-fections and inadequacies in a way that de-bilitates their task performances (Sarason,1976, 1978; Wine, 1971). The greater theanxiety, the more self-preoccupation willoccur.

The combination of cognitive withdrawal,self-preoccupation, and negative affect/arousal produces the decline of social per-


formance that is associated with states of highanxiety. People feel especially nervous, speechoutput and productivity decline, speech dis-ruptions increase, and people are less sensi-tive to cues and information regarding ap-propriate self-presentations (e.g., the cuingfunctions of others' behavior, the relevantsocial norms). In addition, the distractiondecreases self-monitoring and control overbehaviors. Behaviors that otherwise would besuppressed because they would create an un-desired impression are more likely to leakthrough one's weakened guard (e.g., nervous,fidgety responses). Such behaviors are asso-ciated with the right-most portion of the in-verted-U relationship between anxiety andbehavior; as anxiety reaches a high state, per-formance declines. The high arousal stateand the performance decrements are againproposed to be mediated by the person's cog-nitive state.

Proposition 6. When people are frozen inthe assessment phase and unable to with-draw, they will enact alternative self-presen-tational goals that are less preferred but moreviable (i.e., associated with higher outcomeexpectancies). They might consider innoc-uous images, such as being quietly pleasant,or engage in self-presentational habits thathave been employed frequently in the past.These activities place fewer demands on theirdiminished capacities. Such alternatives alsoinvolve a lowering of aspirations, since theyare unlikely to yield the originally preferredsocial outcomes. At best, these alternativespermit the individual to avoid the highly un-favorable outcomes that are expected to ac-company self-presentational failures. An ex-tremely shy person, for example, might nodand smile at appropriate moments while oth-ers are speaking, thereby appearing to benice, if not incisive or intelligent.

These alternatives would not be expectedto replace the original goal. Rather, they willcoexist with it. People must do something,even while being obsessed with the difficul-ties of achieving the original goal, and thesealternatives provide the action guides theyuse. People will vacillate, though, betweenthe original goal and the alternative. Theyare still trying to reach the original goal andare still anxious, but they are doing some-thing to make the best of a bad situation.

In the case of people who are anxious be-

cause of uncertainty about how to respond,these alternative behaviors serve as stallingtactics that permit them to examine the sit-uation more closely before committingthemselves to a more definitive self-presen-tational stance. People bide their time untilthey surmise how best to make a satifactoryimpression. In the case of people who areanxious because of perceived deficits in self-presentational abilities, these behaviors con-ceal the more blatant self-presentational fail-ures that are expected to accompany morecomplete participation. By remaining silent,not interrupting others, smiling, nodding,and withholding information about them-selves, they protect themselves and appearnonassertively friendly or sociable. Mc-Govern (1976) notes that "the response ofno response may be a learned method of cop-ing with ambiguity and time pressures for[highly socially anxious] individuals" (p. 94).In addition, Efran and Korn (1969) observedthat "when the socially cautious person doesparticipate, the content of his contributionis generally 'safe.' He waits until he haslearned what kind of comment his 'audience'will appreciate or restricts his remarks to thepatently nonoffensive" (p. 78). The individ-ual might even have his or her actions mis-interpreted by others and be seen as myste-riously aloof, or quiet but deep.

The use of disclaimers is another meansof keeping one's participation socially safeand noncommitting. Disclaimers are verbalstatements that are used in advance to dispelnegative impressions that might be conveyedby an actor's intended conduct (Hewitt &Stokes, 1975). For example, socially anxiouspeople might hedge their statements withcomments such as "Sometimes I think that. . .""I could be wrong, but. . ." "I haven'tgiven it much thought, but. . . ." Theymight also ask the audience to suspend ev-aluative judgment with comments such as,"Don't get me wrong, but. . . ." Throughdisclaimers, people try out various self-pre-sentations and get feedback from others with-out incurring the costs that would be asso-ciated with a more definitive but disapprovedstance. The use of disclaimers should in-crease when people are experiencing socialanxiety and want to present themselves in asafe, noncommitting manner.

Proposition 7. People will avoid attributing

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self-presentational difficulties to importantpersonal dimensions to the extent they canfind a viable alternative explanation for theproblem. People who anticipate or encoun-ter self-presentational difficulties can usuallyfind a wide range of potential causes. Theserange from ones in the situation (e.g., "Theboss always intimidates everyone;" "Every-one feels nervous while giving a speech"), topersonal factors, including debilitating inter-nal conditions (e.g., "I didn't get much sleeplast night;" "I have a lot on my mind andjust can't concentrate on this now"), lack ofrelevant experience (e.g., "This was only myfirst job interview so it's not too surprisingthat it didn't go well"), lack of effort (e.g.,"If only I had planned more for the speech,it would have gone much better"), and lackof relevant attributes or skills (e.g., "I justdon't have what it takes to do well at this"),to the combination of self and situation (e.g.,"I don't like this kind of party, but I do feelmore comfortable at other types").

The explanation people employ not onlydefines the causal "truth" underlying theevent from their perspectives, but also canaffect their esteem. Judicious selection fromamong causal alternatives allows people toavoid lowering their standing on importantdimensions. People who, for example, attrib-ute a self-presentational failure to aspects ofthe situation or a temporary internal state(e.g., having a cold) can maintain belief intheir social ability. They thereby maintainself-esteem and, if they can convince othersthat the difficulty was caused by these lessthreatening factors, public esteem as well.

Attributional statements can be used tosecure and maintain desired identities bothto others and oneself. It has been well docu-mented that people who encounter self-pre-sentational difficulties (e.g., public failures onimportant tests) attempt to account for theperformance by proferring self-serving expla-nations that minimize the impact of theevent for important personal dimensions(e.g., Bradley, 1978; Schlenker, 1980, inpress-b). In addition, people who anticipateupcoming self-presentational problems offeraccounts in advance. For example, nervouspeople who are concerned about their per-formance on an upcoming speech might tellassociates that they feel a cold coming on andjust aren't their usual selves that day. If they

then perform poorly, the associates might bemore likely to attribute the performance tothe cold rather than the actors' poor prepa-ration or abilities.

Self-serving explanations are not alwaysviable. A preferred explanation can be con-tradicted by other facts known about thepresent situation (e.g., it is clear the actordoes not have a cold), other facts knownabout the actor (e.g., he or she has a repu-tation for similar failures in the past), or theconsensus of opinion of others (e.g., mem-bers of the audience believe the actor reallyhas a low standing on the dimension). Con-ditions that make the situation less ambig-uous by eliminating alternative explanationsfor the problem constrain the attributionspeople can make, compelling them to attrib-ute the performance to a nonpreferred, self-threatening cause. To the extent that alter-native explanations are viable, however, peo-ple will attribute their inferior performancesto causes that do not jeopardize their stand-ings on personally important dimensions.

People who are chronically socially anx-ious are more likely than the average personto perceive constraints on their self-presen-tations, including their attributional state-ments. They are more likely to have lowimpression-relevant outcome expectanciesacross a wider variety of situations, to havedeveloped reputations for failure, and to haveless confidence in their ability to persuadeothers that a self-flattering explanation is jus-tified. This is not to suggest that chronicallysocially anxious people will always displayself-effacing attributions, since they will at-tribute their performances to self-flatteringcauses when they perceive no constraints.But they will be more sensitive to cues thatsuggest constraints and display more pro-nounced self-effacing attributions than theaverage person across a wider variety of sit-uations. Indeed, Arkin, Appleman, and Bur-ger (1980) found that subjects who scoredhigh but not low in chronic social anxietybecame far more self-effacing in their per-formance attributions, accepting responsibil-ity for failure and rejecting it for success,when a committee of high prestige others wasto evaluate their behavior than when such anevaluation was canceled. When the threat ofthe evaluation did not exist, socially anxioussubjects presented themselves in a more flat-


tering fashion, taking greater responsibilityfor success than failure. In a second study,Arkin et al. replicated the tendency for so-cially anxious subjects to take more respon-sibility for failure than success, and found itwas more prominent when subjects' attri-butions were assessed via the bogus pipelineprocedure, in which they believed their "pri-vate" reactions to success and failure couldbe detected by the experimenter. Thus, peo-ple who are chronically socially anxious seemespecially sensitive to constraints on theirself-presentations.

Proposition 8. People are likely to employself-handicapping tactics when more attrac-tive alternative explanations for self-presen-tational problems are unavailable, the socialperformance is pertinent to a personally im-portant dimension, and uncertainty existsabout their standing on the dimension. If noself-serving explanations are available thatadequately account for self-presentationaldifficulties that threaten self- and public-es-teem, people may employ selfrhandicappingstrategies. In an excellent analysis of "psy-chopathological symptoms" as forms of self-handicapping, Snyder and Smith (in press)define self-handicapping as

a process wherein a person, in response to an anticipatedloss of self-esteem resulting from the possibility of in-adequate performance in a domain where performanceclearly implicates ability or competence, adopts char-acteristics or behaviors that superficially constitute ad-mission of a problem, weakness or deficit, but assist theindividual in (1) controlling attributions (made by one-self or others) concerning performance so as to discountthe self-relevant implications of success, (2) avoiding thethreatening evaluative situation entirely, or (3) main-taining existing environmental conditions that maxi-mize positive self-relevant feedback and minimize neg-ative self-relevant feedback.

Jones and Berglas (1978; Berglas & Jones,1978) first suggested and demonstrated thatpeople will exaggerate the influence of im-pediments and handicaps to the point of"stacking the cards" against themselves toincrease the likelihood of failure, thereby dis-counting the personal implications of poorperformance. If, for example, an individualfails in some intellectual or social endeavorwhile inebriated, the poor performance canbe discounted by attributing it to the alcoholand not the individual's task-relevant skills.If, on the other hand, the inebriated individ-

ual does well, attributions to relevant skillsare augmented: The person triumphed de-spite the debilitating effects of the handicap.

Suffering from anxiety can similarly beused as a self-handicapping tactic (Leary &Schlenker, 1981; Snyder & Smith, in press).Smith, Snyder, and Handelsman (1982)demonstrated the self-protective function ofanxiety. High test anxious females were toldthat they would be taking a two-part intel-ligence test. To manipulate their concernsabout evaluation, they were told either thatthe test was widely used and they would begiven test feedback after the second part(evaluation condition) or that the test wasnew and still being developed, so they wouldnot receive performance feedback after thesecond part (nonevaluation condition). Toaffect the relevance of anxiety as an esteem-protecting tactic, subjects in the evaluationcondition were also either (a) told that anx-iety interferes with performance on the test,(b) told that anxiety seems to have no effecton performance on the test, or (c) given noinformation about anxiety and performance.After they completed the first pail of the test,subjects were made uncertain about theirperformance on the second part by providingthem with mixed performance-feedback.Subjects were then asked to report their levelsof anxiety prior to beginning the critical sec-ond portion of the test.

It was found that subjects in the noneval-uation condition reported the lowest level ofanxiety. These subjects should not have beenas concerned with the self-relevant implica-tions of their performance, and so theyshould actually have been less anxious. Theyalso would have had no reason to employanxiety for self-protective purposes. In theevaluation condition, however, subjects notonly reported more anxiety, but said theywere most anxious when they had been toldeither nothing about the relationship be-tween anxiety and performance or that anx-iety debilitates performance. Subjects whowere told that anxiety was not a viable excusefor poor performance reported reduced efforton the test as an alternative self-protectivetactic.

Given the self-report basis of the measuresused in this study by Smith et al., it is notclear whether the subjects who reported high

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anxiety were simply doing so as an excusefor a potentially poor performance, were ac-tually experiencing high anxiety in a way thatwould act as a real handicap to future per-formance, or both. Anxiety provides a viableexcuse of the sort described in Proposition7 as well as the type of handicap covered byProposition 8.

In any case, people can employ self-hand-icapping in situations where they are expe-riencing or expect to experience self-presen-tational difficulties. For example, sociallyanxious people who fear being seen as inter-personally incompetent may avoid encoun-ters that are expected to present social dif-ficulties. Although such behavior precludesthe development of friendships, it allows theperson to attribute the lack of sociability tochoice rather than lack of interpersonal skills.Similarly, an individual who is experiencingsocial anxiety at a party might drink morethan usual so that interpersonal difficultiesmay be attributed to the alcohol rather thanto personal deficiencies.

Self-handicapping is most likely to occurwhen people anticipate self-presentationaldifficulties that are relevant to an importantpersonal dimension, alternative attractiveexplanations of the poor performance areunavailable, and uncertainty exists abouttheir standing on the dimension. Self-hand-icapping can involve potential costs to theuser's identity, since many handicaps havenegative connotations (e.g., being an alco-holic or being anxious). For this reason, peo-ple will avoid highlighting handicaps unlessthey are already known to have the handicap(e.g., the person with the reputation of beingsocially anxious) or alternative, more attrac-tive explanations for the performance areunavailable. Self-handicapping also will bereserved for performances that are pertinentto more rather than less important personaldimensions (Jones & Berglas, 1978; Snyder& Smith, in press). Unimportant dimensionsproduce less self-presentational concern anddo not justify resorting to handicaps that maythemselves carry negative connotations. Fi-nally, self-handicapping is more likely to oc-cur when uncertainty exists about the actor'sstanding on the pertinent dimension (Jones& Berglas, 1978; Snyder & Smith, in press).If people (the actor included) are convinced

that the actor lacks the attributes or skills thatare pertinent to the dimension, self-handi-capping would serve no purpose. Thus, theperson who is known (by himself and others)to lack important social skills may drink toget his mind off his problems, but cannot bydoing so deflect an attribution that has al-ready been made. Self-handicapping is onlyuseful when it can deflect attributions fromthe dimension to the handicap.

Proposition 9. People who conceptualizethemselves as socially anxious are morelikely to experience social anxiety and displaythe behaviors associated with anxiety acrossa wide range of social situations. When peo-ple experience social anxiety across a widerange of situations (consistency), believe theyexperience it more intensely or often thanothers (distinctiveness), and believe that oth-ers view them as socially anxious (consen-sus), they will eventually come to concep-tualize themselves as "socially anxious." Theself-construct "socially anxious" (or its forms,e.g., "shy," "embarrassable") can create aself-fulfilling prophecy.

People who have well established self-con-structs on a particular dimension are selec-tively attentive and more responsive to in-formation that is relevant to the dimension(Markus, 1977). Socially anxious people willbe sensitized to cues that suggest internalarousal, imply self-presentational difficulties,or focus them on the evaluative reactions ofothers. Consequently, they are more likelyto enter the assessment process described inProposition 2. Further, they are more likelyto interpret ambiguous information in a waythat is consistent with their self-constructs,by interpreting (a) any internal arousal theyfeel as an indication of anxiety or (b) anyinformation that remotely suggests a self-pre-sentational problem as a portent of failure.The tendency to perceive and remember oth-ers' negative evaluations should exacerbateanxiety. Smith and Sarason (1975) foundthat highly and moderately socially anxioussubjects rated negative feedback from othersas more negative than nonanxious subjectsand were more disturbed by it. O'Banion andArkowitz (1977) showed that highly sociallyanxious women remembered negative inci-dents during an interaction with a male con-federate better than women low in social anx-


iety. Of course, assessment could still gen-erate favorable outcome expectancies, inwhich case they would not feel socially anx-ious on that occasion (Proposition 3). Theodds are increased, however, that they willemerge from assessment with an unfavorableoutcome expectancy. Social anxiety will againbe generated and serve as further confirma-tion for their self-schemas. In short, theyshould experience social anxiety and displaythe types of behaviors associated with anxietyacross a wider range of situations than peoplewho do not view themselves as sociallyanxious.

It should be clear that from this perspec-tive, chronic social anxiety represents a cog-nitive label, a self-construct, that people ap-ply to themselves and that mediates theirarousal and behavior in social settings. Theself-construct does not cause anxiety but hasramifications for the processing of informa-tion that can result in what we view as theinternal reactions and overt behaviors asso-ciated with anxiety. These self-constructs aresusceptible to change through techniquesthat modify cognitive structures and self-ef-ficacy expectations (Bandura, 1977).

The Forms of Social Anxiety

The diverse forms of social anxiety fre-quently mentioned in the literature—social-evaluative anxiety, dating anxiety, shyness,stagefright, and so forth—often seem to re-flect (a) theorists' preferences for a particularword or phrase and (b) the specific type ofsituation in which the anxiety is manifested(e.g., if a person is on a date, it is datinganxiety; on stage, it is stagefright) rather thanany profound difference in the experienceitself. Yet, there does seem to be at least oneunderlying dimension that provides a heu-ristic classification of different types of socialanxiety and has implications for both theantecedents of each and the likely behavioralreactions (Leary, 1982; Leary & Schlenker,1981).

Social settings differ in the degree to whichpeople's behaviors follow from or are con-tingent on the responses of others (Jones &Gerard, 1967). In contingent interactions, theresponses of a given individual depend largelyon the prior responses of others, as in a con-versation or behaviors on a date. Although

each participant usually has interaction goalsand plans about how to achieve them, im-mediate actions must be responsive to thebehaviors of the others. Hence, people'splans are typically more flexible and containfeedback loops that allow their own actionsto be guided by others' responses. Aspects ofthe plan (sometimes the entire plan) mayhave to be modified continually dependingon what transpires.

In noncontingent interactions, people's re-sponses are guided primarily by internalplans and only minimally, if at all, by other'sresponses, as in the cases of a performer ina play, a student delivering a speech, and asupervisor who follows a prepared text in in-structing new workers about company pro-cedures. The plans that guide behavior areoften quite explicit, as in the cases of a script,speech, or musical composition, but none-theless might contain room for some im-provisation, as when a lecturer anticipatesand responds to questions that arise from theaudience. Actions are usually predeterminedby the plan and, unless some unexpectedevent occurs (e.g., the audience becomes un-ruly), will be executed with relatively mini-mal responsiveness to the audience's behav-iors. The actions of others serve primarily acuing function, telling people when to exe-cute a particular behavioral sequence, and donot serve to alter the guiding plan. Examplesare a performer who waits for coperformerson stage to finish a line before giving a pre-determined response or a salesperson whoasks a customer a prepared question from amemorized script, knowing what the answeris likely to be but waiting for it before con-tinuing the sales presentation.

Although the distinction between contin-gent and noncontingent interactions repre-sents the extreme end-points on a contin-uum, it is useful in focusing on two broadclasses of social anxiety. Shyness, dating anx-iety, and heterosexual-social anxiety occur incontingent interactions, in which peoplemust be continually responsive to the actionsof others. In contrast, audience anxiety,stagefright, and speech anxiety occur in non-contingent interactions, in which people areperforming some preplanned material beforeothers. For the sake of brevity, we shall referto interaction anxiety when speaking of anx-iety in contingent interactions and audience

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anxiety when referring to anxiety in noncon-tingent ones (Leary, in press; Leary &Schlenker, 1981). Buss (1980) similarly dis-tinguishes between shyness and audienceanxiety as two forms of social anxiety butdoes not employ the interaction contingencyas a basis for the distinction.

Since both interaction and audience anx-iety are conceptualized as forms of socialanxiety, the same sorts of antecedents de-scribed earlier will affect both. Also, peoplewho tend to experience one with a high fre-quency will tend to experience the other. Insupport of this statement, Buss (1980) andLeary (in press) found that responses to self-report scales designed to tap interaction andaudience anxiety were positively correlated(rs = .48 and .44, respectively).

More intensive examination of these twoforms of social anxiety suggests some possiblereasons why interaction and audience anxi-ety, although correlated, are not identical. Ascompared with contingent interactions, non-contingent ones (a) usually focus the atten-tion of a larger number of people on the actor(e.g., as in a play or a class lecture), (b) areoften more important, since they usually oc-cur less frequently and often involve somesort of formal evaluation (e.g., a play will bereviewed, a class speech will be graded), (c)must be planned more thoroughly in ad-vance (e.g., composing the speech or mem-orizing the lines), (d) provide people withgreater structure and less ambiguity duringthe performance, (e) require somewhat dif-ferent social skills (e.g., require less "ad lib"ability during the performance), and (f) pro-vide people with different sorts of options forcontrolling how they participate (e.g., it isusually not practical for a person in a non-contingent interaction to withdraw from thestage, fade into a corner, remain silent, or soon, even though he or she might want to;these options and others exist in contingentinteractions). Of course, exceptions to theabove exist (e.g., some contingent interac-tions may be more important than somenoncontingent ones), but these features seemto distinguish most examples of the two typesof social settings.

Given these features, one might expectcertain people to do reasonably well in onetype of situation but not in the other. Forinstance, people who feel comfortable in

structured, well-planned encounters but whoworry about their ability to respond spon-taneously might be anxious in contingentsettings but relatively at ease in noncontin-gent ones. Conversely, people who prefer thespontaneity of casual conversations may dowell in contingent settings but become anx-ious when standing as the center of attentionin a noncontingent one, especially if they feelinadequately prepared for the performance.Although other examples could be cited ofhow the features might differentially affectanxiety, the important point is that the twotypes of settings place somewhat differentpressures on people and require slightly dif-ferent self-presentational skills. Future workmight be directed at assessing the usefulnessof this distinction.

Cross-cutting the contingency dimension,one can differentiate between cases wherepeople anticipate that they are likely to havea self-presentational failure and ones wherethey have already had such a failure in thesituation. Some event, such as a faux pas,impropriety, accident, or transgression, mayoccur that contradicts actors' desired iden-tities up to that point in time and causes themto perceive that they now appear in an un-satisfactory manner. These undesired eventscreate social predicaments and pose an im-mediate, concrete threat to the actor's iden-tity (Schlenker, 1980, in press-b). The oc-currence of undesired events should induceself-attention even in people who, up to thatpoint in time, were unconcerned about oth-ers' reactions. Further, it is a rare person whois so confident of his or her self-presenta-tional skills as to not have some doubt aboutthe likelihood of maintaining a preferredimpression in the face of the threat. There-fore, an identity-threatening event is likelyto generate some social anxiety in almosteveryone.

Anxiety that arises from predicaments hasbeen termed embarrassment or shame, de-pending on the nature of the event. Shamerefers to the occurrence of something regret-table, dishonorable, or disgraceful, and to thefeelings of guilt, incompetence, indecency, orblameworthiness that are generated. Embar-rassment refers to a somewhat less potentexperience that is disconcerting or flustering,causing one to feel self-conscious and ill-at-ease. The difference between them seems to


rest on the intensity of the experience andthe moral connotations. In both cases, theindividual's performance has failed to meetstandards. In the case of shame, however, thestandards are more important to the individ-ual (e.g., involving moral worth or decencyas opposed to social or etiquette-relatedskills), and the failure to live up to them cre-ates a more traumatic event that has greaterramifications for one's identity.4

The distinction between the anticipationof self-presentational difficulties and the oc-currence of a predicament has some empir-ical justification. As noted earlier, factoranalyses of fear and anxiety inventoriessometimes reveal two social anxiety factors,and the second factor invariably containsitems that reflect the occurrence of predica-ment-creating events such as looking foolish,being criticized, making mistakes, and beingmisunderstood (Bates, 1971; Bernstein &Allen, 1969; Braun & Reynolds, 1969). Suchevents can be said to generate anxiety thatmight later be labeled embarrassment orshame by the actor. At one level, though, allsocial anxiety can be viewed as representingconcerns about predicaments, be they antic-ipated or actual. Indeed, people who are ex-periencing social anxiety in the absence ofa blatant, identity-threatening event can besaid to be fantasizing about potential predic-aments and giving anticipatory reactions tothem (Jackson & Latane, 1981; Snyder,Note 6).

Unfortunately, there has been relativelylittle empirical work designed to examinesimilarities and differences between forms ofsocial anxiety. The research that has beenconducted has either (a) examined the prop-erties of one of the forms by itself or (b) ex-amined the correlation between scales thatwere constructed on an a priori basis to dis-tinguish different forms of social anxiety(e.g., Buss, 1980; Leary, in press). Thus, theforms proposed here must be viewed tenta-tively until more evidence is accumulated.

Implications for Counseling

As noted at the outset of this article, socialanxiety constitutes a personal problem for ahigh percentage of the population, and alarge number of people who seek professional

counseling do so because they experiencewhat they perceive to be a high degree ofanxiety in certain social situations. Most ofthe approaches employed by practitionerswho deal with socially anxious individualsmay be classified into one of three models—social skills training, self-reevaluation tech-niques, and systematic desensitization—allof which have been demonstrated to be suc-cessful in particular cases (see Leary, 1982).However, the present conceptualization sug-gests that all cases of chronic social anxietydo not arise for precisely the same reasonsfor all individuals, although the precipitatingfactors will always involve concerns with howone is appearing to others. Consequently,careful attention to the specific nature of aclient's self-presentational concerns shouldenhance treatment effectiveness in counsel-ing settings. These concerns may be dividedinto at least four general problem areas: (a)inadequate social skills, including not know-ing the appropriate rules and rituals, (b) mis-perceptions of social adequacy, (c) unrealisti-cally high standards, and (d) overconcernabout interpersonal evaluations.

Social anxiety often arises from an accu-rately perceived social skills deficit: The in-dividual is unable to interact effectively withothers, comes across poorly in social inter-actions, and knows it. In these cases, skillstraining (e.g., Bellack & Hersen, 1979; Cur-ran, 1977; Galassi & Galassi, 1979; Twen-tyman & McFall, 1975) would be the treat-ment of choice. Treatment might focus oneither information acquisition, response ac-quisition, or response facilitation, dependingon the extent of the client's skill deficit (Ban-dura, 1969; Bellack & Hersen, 1979; Curran,1977). Successful therapy would consist ofallowing the client to acquire (e.g., throughobservation of models) and practice (e.g., roleplaying) needed social behaviors and to de-velop enhanced beliefs in his or her abilityto interact effectively.

Curran, Wallander, and Fischetti (1980)showed that socially anxious individuals canbe identified on the basis of whether they

4 Buss (1980) distinguished four forms of social anx-iety: shyness (comparable to what we have called inter-action anxiety), audience anxiety, embarrassment, andshame.

SOCIAL ANXIETY 665

actually demonstrate clear deficits in socialskills that they accurately perceive or showgood social skills but underestimate their so-cial abilities. Skills training should be effec-tive only for the former group. Those withoutdemonstrable skill problems but who mis-perceive their abilities should benefit mostfrom procedures aimed at convincing themthey are socially adequate individuals whogenerally make good impressions on others.They may have suffered a history of unsat-isfactory encounters with hypercritical friendsor family, or may have otherwise come tomisperceive the skills they possess. Cognitiverestructuring (Kanter & Goldfriend, 1979;Malkiewich & Merluzzi, 1980) and proce-dures designed to modify negative self-state-ments (Glass, Gottman, & Shmurak, 1976;Rehm & Marston, 1968) have been shownto be effective in reducing social anxiety andenhancing interpersonal effectiveness, butshould work best for this group of individ-uals. A number of existing procedures, in-cluding social successes under therapist su-pervision, vicarious experience throughmodeling, verbal instruction, and so forth,seem effective in increasing perceptions ofself-efficacy (Bandura, 1977).

A related problem occurs when people setunrealistically high personal standards forassessing social performance, so that they sel-dom feel satisfied with their interpersonalbehavior or how they are regarded by others,even when they recognize that they are re-ceiving approval (Bandura, 1969). Here,therapy should be aimed at repudiating theunrealistic standards and substituting moremanageable ones.

Other socially anxious individuals mayexperience problems because they are over-concerned with how they are regarded byothers. People who are high in the need forapproval or the fear of negative evaluation,for example, may simply be too motivatedto make a favorable impression on others.They may be motivated to impress nearlyeveryone with whom they interact, includingothers whose evaluations should (objectively)cause them little concern, or they may beoverly motivated to impress particular au-diences because they overestimate the effectof their behaviors on others' reactions (e.g.,"She'll hate me tonight if I'm not an abso-

lutely charming date") or the importance ofothers' reactions for their own lives (e.g., "I'lljust die if he doesn't like me").

Ellis and Harper (1975) suggested that thebelief that one must obtain love and approvalfrom others is one of the primary irrationalideas that interferes with anxiety-free living.One aim of rational emotive therapy is tolead the client to relinguish dire needs forsocial approval and forego the goal of ob-taining acceptance for its own sake. Such anapproach may be especially effective for so-cially anxious clients who are overly moti-vated to make favorable impressions.

In sum, although we propose that all in-stances of social anxiety arise from self-pre-sentational concerns, a wide variety of situ-ational and dispositional factors may precip-itate such concerns for different individuals.Therapists should carefully examine clients'typical modes of interaction, their sophisti-cation in appreciating the rules of social in-teraction, their perceptions of how they areregarded, their standards, and the types ofsituations that typically produce anxiety forthem in order to elucidate the nature of theself-presentational problem. Treatment canthen be tailored. The hypothesis that treat-ments for social anxiety should be matchedto the locus of the specific self-presentationalproblem in order to achieve maximal effec-tiveness warrants future investigation.

Summary

We have proposed that social anxiety is aconstruct applied to describe a constellationof cognitive and affective experiences thatresult from the prospect of interpersonalevaluation in real or imagined social situa-tions. Associated with it are a variety of re-actions, including withdrawal (either physi-cal or cognitive), feelings of inferiority, self-preoccupation, and reduced self-monitoringand control.

Social anxiety indicates a perceived threatto the identities of those who experience it,since it reflects concerns about how they areregarded in social life. As such, it is a man-ifestation of a perceived self-presentationalproblem. Socially anxious individuals do notperceive themselves capable of controlling,in the fashion they desire, the impression-rel-


evant reactions of others. Their impression-relevant outcome expectancies are low, andthey perceive a discrepancy between theirstandards and their social performances oroutcomes. Social anxiety occurs in real orimagined social situations when people aremotivated to make a particular impressionon others but doubt they will do so.

Situational, dispositional, and audiencefactors that affect the motivation to impressothers and the likelihood of doing so affectsocial anxiety. Individual differences in socialanxiousness are proposed to arise from per-sonal characteristics of individuals that influ-ence the degree to which they are motivatedto impress others and perceive self-presen-tational difficulties. Further, once peoplehave labeled themselves as "socially anxious"they become more likely to exhibit anxietyacross a wide range of social situations.

The self-presentation approach to socialanxiety provides an integrative conceptualview of the phenomenon by adopting a so-cial-psychological perspective, one that rootsthe genesis of the experience in the social in-teraction process itself. The approach speci-fies both the antecedents of the experienceand the behavioral responses to self-presen-tational concerns and is consistent with theexisting research on anxiety in general andsocial anxiety in particular. In addition, theapproach contains numerous implicationsfor counseling situations, especially the rec-ommendation that treatments be tailored tothe specific type of self-presentational prob-lem encountered by people seeking help.

Reference Notes

1. Jones, W. H., & Russell, D. Shyness and mood slates:A trail-situation analysis. Paper presented at themeeting of the Southwestern Psychological Associa-tion, Houston, 1981.

2. Leavy, P. Situational and dispositional antecedentsof shyness. Unpublished honor's thesis. University ofFlorida, 1980.

3. Jones, W. H.,& Russell, D. The social reticence scale:An objective instrument to measure shyness. Unpub-lished manuscript, University of Tulsa, 1981.

4. Framing, W. J., &. Brody, L. R. Public self-conscious-ness, social anxiety, and audience familiarity. Un-published manuscript, University of Florida, 1981.

5. Leary, M. R., & Dobbins, S. E. Social anxiety, sexualbehavior, and contraceptive use. Unpublished manu-script, Denison University, 1982.

6. Snyder, C. R. Personal communication, 1981.

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Received September 30, 1981 •

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