The effect of the decreased safety behaviors on anxiety and negative thoughts in social phobics

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2003.11.002Get rights and content

Abstract

In order to examine the effect of the decreased safety behaviors on social anxiety and negative thoughts and explore the mechanism underlying this effect, this study compared three types of exposure namely, exposure with decreased safety behaviors under cognitive rationale, exposure with decreased safety behaviors under extinction rationale, and exposure with no change in safety behavior. Forty-five social phobics were randomly assigned to one of three exposure groups. Results showed that exposure with decreased safety behaviors under cognitive rationale produced significantly greater reductions in anxiety and belief ratings for feared outcomes than exposure with decreased safety behaviors under extinction rationale and exposure with no change in safety behaviors. These results imply that exposure could be more effective if social phobics are encouraged to drop their safety behaviors in the feared social situation, and that the cognitive process of disconfirmation of negative thoughts is the critical element in determining effectiveness of decreased safety behaviors.

Section snippets

Subjects

The Social Avoidance and Distress Scale was administered to 921 undergraduate students who were taking introductory psychology class, and the students in the top 15% (91 points or above) were tentatively selected. Then, those students were individually interviewed by a clinical psychologist (E.J.K.) using the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule—Revised (ADIS-R: Dinardo & Barlow, 1988), which is most widely used by previous research as a screening tool for social phobia. In ADIS-R, severity of

Anxiety

Mean scores of “anxiety” rating for each condition are shown in Table 1. While the main effect of the Comparison II (decreased safety behaviors group with cognitive rationale vs. decreased safety behaviors group with extinction rationale) was not significant, that of the Comparison I (both decreased safety behaviors groups combined vs. exposure-only group) was found to be significant (F(1,42)=4.91, P<.05). In short, the two decreased safety behaviors groups rated themselves as being less

Discussion

In order to examine the effect of decreased safety behaviors and the mechanism of such effect, this study compared thee types of exposure. Results showed that exposure with decreased safety behaviors under cognitive rationale produced significantly greater reductions in anxiety and belief ratings for feared outcomes than exposure with decreased safety behaviors under extinction rationale and exposure with no change in safety behaviors.

Drawing from the results of the present study, decreasing

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by research funds from Pilsang AJou Scholarship.

References (20)

There are more references available in the full text version of this article.

Cited by (112)

  • Social Anxiety Disorder

    2022, Comprehensive Clinical Psychology, Second Edition
View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text