Introduction

Abstract

Social anxiety involves feelings of apprehension, self-consciousness, and emotional distress in anticipated or actual social-evaluative situations. Such anxiety occurs when people want to make a favorable impression but doubt that they will succeed (Schlenker & Leary, 1982). There has to be a belief that the situation involves scrutiny or evaluation by others regardless of whether this is actually true or not, that negative evaluation is a possible or even a likely outcome, and that the consequences of such negative evaluation would be harmful. The essence of social anxiety is that the person fears that he or she will be found to be deficient or inadequate by others and therefore will be rejected.