Negative self-evaluations and the relation to performance level in socially anxious children and adolescents

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Abstract

The current study investigated whether negatively biased self-evaluations of nervousness and social skills are related to how well an individual actually performs, that is performance level. Sixty-eight high socially anxious and 68 control participants (age range 9–17 years) gave a 5 min speech in front of a pre-recorded audience of same age peers and a teacher. Participants' evaluations immediately after the task were measured on a number of performance dimensions. Three independent observers also evaluated recordings of the speech performances. Participants were further divided into good and bad performers based on their actual performance level as judged by the observers. Self-evaluations of the high socially anxious participants were negatively biased for nervous appearance regardless of how well they actually performed. In contrast, a negative bias for social skills only occurred in the high anxious participants with a good performance. The social skill evaluations of the poor performers appear warranted. Taking actual performance level into account may help to clarify the exact nature of a negative bias in socially anxious youth and has clear implications for the choice of treatment approach.

Section snippets

Negative self-evaluations and negative bias

A large number of studies conducted with adult and youth populations have investigated socially anxious individuals' self-evaluations in relation to a social-evaluative task, for example a conversation or speech. These studies have produced remarkably consistent findings. Compared to their low anxious counterparts, adults (e.g., Norton and Hope, 2001, Stopa and Clark, 1993) and youth (e.g., Alfano et al., 2006, Inderbitzen-Nolan et al., 2007) with social anxiety evaluate their performance as

Negative bias in relation to performance level

Negative bias and performance level are, by definition, linked. Only if an individual's self-evaluation is negative compared to his or her performance level as judged by independent observers is it possible to speak of a negative bias. If an individual's performance level is poor, a negative bias is less likely: in that case the negative self-evaluation would be more or less correct. Yet, the question of whether a bias occurs only under the condition of an independently judged good performance

The present study

The present study addressed three research questions in a nonclinical sample of youth aged between 9 and 17 years. First, and in line with previous research, we aimed to verify that the self-evaluations of high socially anxious youth are significantly more negative than the self-evaluations of low socially anxious youth. Second, we tested if the self-evaluations of high socially anxious youth are negatively biased by comparing their and low socially anxious youth's self-evaluations of nervous

Participants

Participants were 136 low and high socially anxious adolescents selected from a larger community sample (N = 327) who took part in the Social Anxiety and Normal Development (SAND) study (Westenberg et al., in press). The larger sample represented a wide range of scores on the Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (SAS–A; La Greca & Lopez, 1998). The majority of participants in the SAND study were white, Dutch adolescents from middle class families. First, 68 adolescents (38 boys and 30 girls)

Results

Analyses of the first two research questions were initially conducted with gender and age (three age groups: 9–11 years, 12–14 years and 15–17 years) included as independent variables. This revealed just one significant interaction effect with social anxiety group. The ANOVA on evaluations of social skills with rater as repeated-measure variable yielded a Social anxiety × Gender × Age interaction effect, F(2, 121) = 3.71, p < .05, partial η2 = 0.06. The interaction was followed up with t-tests

Discussion

The present study found that: (1) high socially anxious youth evaluated their performance more negatively than youth with lower levels of social anxiety, (2) compared to nervousness ratings from independent observers, all high socially anxious youth were negatively biased in their perceptions of looking nervous; and (3) only those high socially anxious youth who were judged by observers as good performers showed a negative bias in terms of their social skills. That is, better performing high

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