EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL ANXIETY: The Role of Attraction, Social Competition, and Social Hierarchies
Section snippets
EVOLUTIONARY CONSIDERATIONS
Propelled by millions of years of having to solve challenges to reproduction and survival, humans (like other animals) have evolved a complex array of motivations, strategies, and mental mechanisms that predispose them to act in species-typical ways.23, 44, 56, 87 These include strategies and motives for courting and mate selection, coordinated by mental mechanisms for assessing mate attractiveness23; eliciting care from caregivers and providing care to offspring, coordinated by proximity
SOCIAL ANXIETY
Human relationships have evolved to provide an array of valued and necessary resources to individuals in the form of protection, care, support, and opportunities for reproduction.23, 44 Indeed, so important are these resources that it has been the selective pressure to develop ways to secure them that has driven humanoid evolution and given rise to recent changes in brain architecture, language, and many other forms of social intelligence.31 By the same token, loss of control over these social
COMPETITIVE ANXIETY AND SOCIAL HIERARCHIES
In new social encounters people make judgments of their relative dominant–subordinate status very quickly,72 and such judgments affect the way people detect and reason about social threats.34 Social anxiety is invariably triggered by common social situations (e.g., dating, developing a sexual relationship, meeting new people and making new friends, going for job interviews, and taking on new jobs), and a person may recognize his or her anxiety to be unreasonable and certainly undesirable. There
SOCIAL ANXIETY AND FEAR OF BEING UNATTRACTIVE
The desire to be attractive to others has then played a major role in human evolution, and our competitive mentalities are focused on these roles (e.g., wining approval, appreciation, and acceptance). This has now become so competitive, however, that Etcoff41 coined the term “survival of the prettiest” and reviewed a large body of evidence on how attractive people (both in appearance and personality) have many advantages in the social competitions of modern life. There are many negative
SOCIAL SIGNALS, PHYSIOLOGY, AND SOCIAL ANXIETY
Cognitive theorists tend to conceptualize psychopathologies in terms of activating high level schema and assumptions that act as filters for the interpretation of information.29 Evolutionary psychopathologists, on the other hand, focus more on direct-signal, affective-physiologic interactions, in which key cognitions or evaluations may be subconscious.87 Evolutionary approaches allow for exploration in animals that do not have high-level self–other schema or even theory of mind abilities (e.g.,
EVOLVED DEFENSES: THE ROLE OF SUBMISSIVE BEHAVIOR IN SOCIAL ANXIETY
So far, this article has:
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Considered the evolved motivations to be attractive to others, to elicit their investments, and to avoid ostracism and rejection
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Argued that attractiveness seeking is, to some extent, competitive, that is, humans are aware that individuals may chose to associate (e.g., as friends or lovers) and invest in others rather than the self (i.e., that the self may not be chosen, be passed over, rejected, or shunned)
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Hypothesized the existence of evolved cognitive-affect
REFLECTION ON THE CHRONCITY OF SOME SOCIAL ANXIETY CONDITIONS
It is known that some social anxiety conditions, especially generalized social phobia and avoidant personality disorder, can be chronic and highly debilitating.26 If social anxiety so interferes with biosocial goals (e.g., sexual relationships, networking, and attracting the alliances of peers and more powerful others) then why do socially anxious people get so caught up in this competitive dynamic?
SUMMARY
If human social anxiety is not predominately about the fear of physical injury or attack, as it is in other animals, then, to understand human social anxiety (i.e, fear of evaluation), it is necessary to consider why certain types of relationships are so important. Why do humans need to court the good feelings of others and fear not doing so? And why, when people wish to appear attractive to others (e.g., to make friends, date a desired sexual partner, or give a good presentation), do some
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author thanks Drs. F. Schneier and Michael McGuire for their encouragement and insights and helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Thanks also to Hannah Gilbert for help with the references.
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Address reprint requests to Paul Gilbert, FBPsS Mental Health Research Unit Department of Clinical Psychology Kingsway Hospital Derby DE22 3LZ United Kingdom e-mail: [email protected]