Elsevier

Comprehensive Psychiatry

Volume 55, Issue 8, November 2014, Pages 1875-1882
Comprehensive Psychiatry

Direct and indirect predictors of social anxiety: The role of anxiety sensitivity, behavioral inhibition, experiential avoidance and self-consciousness

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comppsych.2014.08.045Get rights and content

Abstract

Using mediated and moderated regression, this study examined the hypothesis that anxiety sensitivity, the tendency to be concerned about anxiety symptoms, and behavioral inhibition, the tendency to withdraw from novel and potentially dangerous stimuli, predict social anxiety indirectly through experiential avoidance as measured by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II and self-consciousness, as measured by the Self-Consciousness Scale. Behavioral inhibition and anxiety sensitivity are operationalized as temperamental traits, while experiential avoidance and self-consciousness are seen as learned emotion regulation strategies. Study 1 included college student groups from Cyprus scoring high and low on social anxiety (N = 64 and N = 63) as measured by the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory. Study 2 examined a random community sample aged 18–65 (N = 324) treating variables as continuous and using the Psychiatric Disorders Screening Questionnaire to screen for social anxiety. Results suggest that experiential avoidance, but not self-consciousness mediates the effects of anxiety sensitivity on predicting social anxiety status, but that behavioral inhibition predicts social anxiety directly and not through the proposed mediators. Moderation effects were not supported. Overall, the study finds that social anxiety symptomatology is predicted not only by behavioral inhibition, but also anxiety sensitivity, when individuals take actions to avoid anxious experiences. Modifying such avoidant coping approaches may be more beneficial for psychological treatments than attempts to change long-standing, temperamental personality traits.

Section snippets

Participants

Participants were 253 (40 male) students, all Greek Cypriot Caucasian from two universities in the Republic of Cyprus who took part in exchange for extra credit. The gender distribution of the study reflects the population of the two universities. Mean age was 21.22, SD = 3.99. These were all full-time students (i.e. not employed full-time outside of college), mainly unmarried (single or in a romantic relationship, but not married or engaged; 94.10%). Seventy-three percent lived in the city,

Participants

Participants were 324 Caucasian Greek-Cypriot adults, (189 female, Mage = 44.87, SD = 11.79), recruited as part of an epidemiological study. Most were working full time (68.8%), were married and/or engaged (58% married, 20.1% engaged, 10.8% single, 3.7% divorced, and the rest were either in a relationship or widowed) and lived with their own family (79.9%). Regarding education, 46.3% were college graduates (including graduate degrees), 11.4% completed some college, 23.1% high-school graduates,

Acknowledgment

The authors wish to thank Dora Georgiou, Margarita Kapsou, and several undergraduate research assistants for their help with data collection. This research was partially funded by grants ΥΓΕΙΑ/0506/18 and ΝΕΑΥΠΟΔΟΜΗ/ΣΤΡΑΤΗ/0309/37 both granted by the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation, the Republic of Cyprus and EU Structural Funds. The funding agencies had no role in the study design, in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, in the writing of the report or in the decision to

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