Abstract

Social anxiety disorder is often conceptualized as arising from a variety of maladaptive cognitions (e.g., attentional bias towards internal sensations, negative beliefs about the self and a fear of negative evaluation). One cognitive domain that has received relatively little attention, despite endorsement from people struggling with social anxiety, is the belief that they may lose control over their speech/behaviour and/or their physical symptoms of anxiety. This parallels similar beliefs about losing control seen in other disorders (e.g., panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder). The present study aimed to evaluate the causal role of beliefs about losing control on social anxiety symptoms in an analogue sample. Beliefs were manipulated using false feedback in a sample of undergraduate psychology students (N = 130) to induce either high or low levels of beliefs about losing control. Participants then engaged in a ‘getting to know you’ task with a confederate. Participants in the high beliefs about losing control (HLC) condition reported significantly greater anxiety just before meeting the confederate than those in the low loss of control (LLC) condition (t(128)=2.90, p=0.004, d=0.51). Further HLC participants reported significantly worse social performance than did those in the LLC condition during their social interaction with a confederate (F(1, 128)=4.19, p=0.04). Finally, the HLC condition was associated with greater perceived failure of control over behaviour during the social interaction than was the LLC condition (t(128)=2.93, p=0.004, d=0.51). Results suggest beliefs about losing control are relevant to the cognitive model of and perhaps treatments for social anxiety.