There is a well-established link between peer victimization and social anxiety disorder (SAD). Additionally, rates of bullying are significantly higher in obese compared to normal-weight individuals. However, social anxiety (SA) has not yet been examined in the context of weight, weight bias, and social rejection. This study examined the relationship between SA and weight in undergraduate women (N = 186). It aimed to determine whether implicit weight bias moderated the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and SA. In addition, it explored the interactive effects of SA, BMI, and body image salience on emotional response to exclusion in a social ostracism paradigm (Cyberball). Participants answered questions pertaining to SA and stigmatizing attitudes toward overweight/obesity and completed an implicit association test about weight. One week later, they played Cyberball, completing state measures of affect before and after the game. Although rates of clinically elevated SA did not differ significantly across normal-weight, overweight, and obese women, implicit weight bias did moderate the relationship between BMI and SA. The 3-way interaction of BMI, SA, and body image salience did not significantly predict post-exclusion state measures. However, body image salience moderated the relationship between SA and post-exclusion anxiety as well as between BMI and post-exclusion anxiety. Findings from this study shed light on the role of body weight in the experience of SA. Results suggest that higher BMI is associated with higher SA for those with high, but not low implicit weight bias. In addition, individuals with elevated SA are particularly reactive to exclusion if their bodies are visible to others. / Psychology

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by an intense fear of negative evaluation from others in social and/or performance situations. Research has demonstrated that socially anxious individuals' post-event processing, or post-mortem review of social situations, often affects their levels of anxiety, negative emotions, interpretations, and memories of events (Brozovich & Heimberg, 2008). Furthermore, research has shown that processing negative descriptions using imagery is more emotion-evoking than semantic processing of the same material (Holmes & Mathews, 2005; Holmes & Mathews, 2010). The present study investigated post-event processing involving mental imagery and its effects on mood, anxiety, and potentially biased interpretations of social and nonsocial events. Socially anxious and non-anxious participants were told they would give a 5 min impromptu speech at the end of the experimental session. They were then randomly assigned to one of three manipulation conditions: post-event processing imagery (PEP-Imagery), post-event processing semantic (PEP-Semantic), or a Control condition. In the post-event processing conditions, participants recalled a past anxiety-provoking speech and thought about the anticipated speech either using imagery (PEP-Imagery) or focusing on their meaning (PEP-Semantic). Following the condition manipulation, participants completed a variety of affect, anxiety, and interpretation measures. Consistent with our predictions, socially anxious individuals in the PEP-Imagery condition displayed greater anxiety than individuals in the other conditions immediately following the induction and before the anticipated speech task. Socially anxious individuals in the PEP-Imagery condition also interpreted ambiguous scenarios in a more socially anxious manner than individuals in the Control condition. The impact of imagery during post-event processing in social anxiety and its implications for cognitive-behavioral interventions are discussed. / Psychology

Person-environment interactions are the rule, not only for development but also for moment-to-moment experience. Knowledge about environmental influences on the manifestation of psychological symptoms is an important area of research, particularly with regard to social anxiety where symptoms vary dramatically depending on the social context. Like other forms of anxiety, social anxiety is thought to have evolved to help us pay attention to, assess, and respond to potential (in this case, intra-species) threats. The current study was based on (1) the theoretical proposition that social anxiety represents an adaptation to hierarchical, or agonic, modes of social organization; (2) the observation that in the non-hierarchical hedonic systems seen in some of our closest primate relatives, submissiveness is not required for group functioning, and (3) more recent empirical data showing that social anxiety symptoms are dependent on contextual factors. The current study integrated these three ideas and examined whether participating in a hedonic system, as compared to an agonic system, diminishes social anxiety, and whether social context moderates the relationship between trait social anxiety and activation of state anxiety. Participants of all different levels of trait social anxiety were randomly assigned to play a group game, the context and rules of which were consistent with either agonic or hedonic social structures. Self-reported anxiety and behaviors associated with social anxiety were then measured. Results from the experiment were mixed, sometimes seemingly conflicting, and therefore difficult to interpret. The more hierarchical, agonic social system was associated with higher anxious affect. However, the type of social system did not appear to affect self-reported submissive behavior, social comparison, or social behavior. Additionally, experimental condition did not moderate the effect of trait social anxiety on these variables. Although our findings were mixed, they hint at the role of social structure in the activation of anxious affect. / Psychology

Individuals with social anxiety have been shown to have higher levels of friendship impairment and greater difficulty establishing close relationships than persons without social anxiety. However, the mechanisms associated with such impairment have not been widely examined. Previous research suggests that deficiencies in prosocial behaviors (e.g., low warmth, limited self-disclosure, and constrained cooperation) during interpersonal exchanges may partially explain their difficulties developing close relationships. The present study aimed to examine the effect that rejection may have on prosocial behaviors, as well as other factors associated with developing and maintaining friendships, including trust, perceived likeability, closeness/connectedness, using an iterated, computerized version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) game. Participants with high (n = 56) and low (n = 35) social anxiety were asked to play the PD game with another participant (actually an experimental confederate) whom they met at the start of the study. Participants were led to believe that they were playing the PD game against the other participant but were actually playing against a computer that was programmed with a strategy meant to initially facilitate cooperation. Cooperation, or giving, in the PD game was measured primarily by the number of tokens that the participant shared with his/her partner. Additionally, participants were randomized to either rejection or non-rejection conditions. Partway through the study, those in the rejection condition were exposed to a programmed decrease in giving by their partner as well as an ambiguous in-person rejection (administered by the experimenter). Participants in the non-rejection condition were not exposed to either the programmed or in-person manipulations. Outcomes of interest included total giving during the PD game, constriction of giving, and the use of particular strategies following rejection in the PD game, as well as various measures of relationship quality collected at the end of each round of play. It was hypothesized that individuals with high social anxiety in the rejection condition would exhibit less total giving and a constricted response to low partner giving and also be less likely to use prosocial strategies to encourage cooperation (i.e., a coaxing strategy) following rejection by the partner compared to those with low social anxiety in the rejection condition. Additionally, we anticipated that those with high social anxiety in the rejection condition would provide lower ratings of the following relationship quality domains following the rejection condition: trust, closeness/connectedness, and perceived likeability than those with low social anxiety in the rejection condition. Overall, results provided little support for these hypotheses. However, there were several significant main effects that highlighted differences among those with high and low social anxiety. For example, individuals with high social anxiety had greater ratings of the expectancy of future rejection and of the importance of their next turn for maintaining the quality of their relationship with their partner. Additionally, there was a trend level (p = .08) social anxiety group by rejection condition interaction on the participant’s trust of his/her partner, such that those with high social anxiety exhibited reductions in relationship trust following rejection whereas those with low social anxiety did not. Implications of these findings as well as limitations and future directions of study are also explored. / Psychology

The broad autism phenotype (BAP) has been defined both behaviorally and biologically. There has been little research on the association of the BAP, behaviorally defined, with neural or cognitive biomarkers typically associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). People diagnosed with ASD tend to show reduced gaze fixation toward the eye region, but much less eye-tracking research has been done related to the BAP (Boraston & Blakemore, 2007). In this study, we sought to assess eye gaze patterns in people with the behaviorally defined BAP, as defined by a score of 30 or above on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ; Baron-Cohen et al., 2001). It was hypothesized that the BAP group participants would exhibit longer average fixation duration to the eye region during an emotion recognition condition, relative to a free-viewing condition, whereas the comparison group participants (defined as an AQ score of 24 and below) would not show a difference in fixation duration to the eye region between conditions. Nine hundred and thirty-nine undergraduates completed an online survey, and 45 of these students (15 BAP group and 30 comparison group) participated in the eye-tracking session, where they viewed a series of human faces, each presented twice within a condition. Results revealed a significant negative relationship between social anxiety and eye region fixation duration in the free-viewing condition, for both presentations of faces. Contrary to expectation, BAP predicted longer eye region fixation duration in the free-viewing condition, for the second presentation of faces. Possible explanations for these surprising findings are discussed. / Master of Science

The clinical presentation of social phobia suggests that alterations in theory of mind (TOM) may play a systematic role in the development and maintenance of the disorder. In the current study we leverage a quantitative neuroeconmic approach to probe for neural and behavior markers of cognitive TOM, as well as rejection estimation, with a particular focus on social phobia. Participants comprised a non-clinical sample that was divided into low (N = 10) and high (N = 7) social anxiety groups based on self-report. Participants completed a one-sided uncertainty ultimatum game designed to probe individual differences in cognitive TOM, as well as rejection estimation. Contrary to predictions, there were no behavioral differences between high and low social anxiety groups in terms of rejection estimation. Although no between-group differences emerged in the traditional TOM network, significant differences were observed in subregions of the striatum during formulation of offers, likely corresponding to estimation of reward expectations. As hypothesized, and consistent with past research, imaging results support the existence of a network regions implicated in TOM, including the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and the temporal parietal junction (TPJ). In addition to these regions, additional areas, including the caudate and insula, were also active during mentalizing components of the task. Collectively, results suggest a novel role for expected-value computations in the development and maintenance of social phobia. / Master of Science

The role of children’s emotion regulation as a potential mediator or moderator in the relations between a family’s emotional expressiveness and their child’s social anxiety was explored in a sample of clinic-referred children. For the mediational analyses, it was predicted that emotional expressivity in families would be associated with social anxiety and that this relationship would be mediated by emotion regulation. For the moderator analyses, it was predicted that the level of emotion regulation would affect the strength of the relationship between emotional expressivity in families and social anxiety. The hypotheses were explored through hierarchical regression analyses. Family expressivity was marginally related to social anxiety. However, exploratory analyses indicated that emotion regulation failed to mediate or moderate this marginal relationship. Interestingly, mother reports of expressivity were related negatively to social anxiety whereas father reports of expressivity were related positively to social anxiety in their offspring. These findings are discussed and their implications are explored. / Master of Science

Emerging research suggests that many adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) experience impairing Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) or social anxiety symptoms (e.g., Joshi et al., 2013; Kleinhans et al., 2010), yet there is little guidance or agreement about how to best assess social anxiety in this population. Direct examination of overt eye gaze patterns may help determine if the attentional biases often reported in people with SAD also operate in those with ASD and co-occurring social anxiety. This study sought to assess the influence of social anxiety on gaze patterns in adults with ASD. An exploratory aim was to better understand the phenomenology of SAD within ASD. Three groups of participants were included: adults with ASD (n = 25), adults with SAD (n = 25), and adults without ASD or SAD (n = 25). As hypothesized, a large subset (n = 11; 44%) of the participants with ASD met diagnostic criteria for SAD. Contrary to study hypotheses related to gaze patterns, however, there was no evidence for gaze vigilance followed by avoidance for socially threatening stimuli in either the ASD or SAD groups, and there was no relationship between fear of negative evaluation and gaze duration toward socially threatening stimuli within the ASD group. Possible reasons for these null findings are considered. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed. / Ph. D.

Sexual victimization among college women is a common problem. This two-part study sought to examine social interaction anxiety as a risk factor of sexual victimization and to examine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of a computer-based risk reduction program. A total of 1095 undergraduate females completed an online survey to assess social anxiety as a risk factor (study part I), a subsample of whom (n = 136, including 51 above the clinical cutoff on a social anxiety measure and 85 below the cutoff) completed the subsequent in-lab study (study part II). During study part II, participants were randomly assigned to either receive a computer-based risk reduction program or an educational program on campus resources (control condition), and their predicted use of resistance techniques was assessed both before and after their assigned program. Participants also responded to an audio recording of a sexual assault vignette to assess risk detection. After controlling for past victimization and depression, social interaction anxiety was not related to predicted use of assertive resistance techniques or to risk detection. However, social anxiety positively predicted use of passive resistance techniques at the lowest level of unwanted sexual advances (i.e., breast fondling) in a series of three escalating sexual advances (i.e., breast fondling, genital fondling, and rape threat). No participants dropped out of the study, and ratings on a questionnaire assessing acceptability of the risk reduction program were positive. Program condition predicted change scores for predicted use of assertive resistance at a low level of unwanted sexual advances (i.e., breast fondling) such that the control group decreased in predicted use of assertive resistance significantly more than the risk reduction program group. Additionally, the risk reduction program group had significantly better risk detection compared to the control group. Therefore, support for the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of the risk reduction program was found. The finding that the control group decreased significantly more than the risk reduction program group in assertive resistance between the two story administrations is important because assertive resistance techniques tend to be the most effective in reducing risk of completed sexual victimization. Therefore, it is important that risk reduction programs encourage women to use assertive resistance. Clinical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed. / Ph. D.

Social Anxiety Disorder is characterized by irrational and persistent fears of potential evaluation and scrutiny by others. For socially anxious youth, the core, maladaptive cognition is fear of negative evaluation (FNE). Whereas Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) targets remediation of intense and unfounded FNE, Attention Bias Modification Treatment (ABMT) targets attention bias. The degree to which FNE and biased attention are related processes is unknown. This study sought to assess the relationship between FNE and two indices of attention bias (dot probe and eye-tracking). In addition, this study examines differences in attention bias between a clinically confirmed group of youth SAD and healthy controls. A significant group difference in average latency to fixate on angry faces was found [F(1,65) = 31.94, p < .001, ηp2 = .33]. However, the pattern was not consistent across the other attention bias metrics (i.e., dot probe bias scores and first fixation direction percentage towards angry faces). In addition, associations between FNE and the attention bias metrics were not statistically significant in either group. Future directions and implications of these findings within the context of refinements to existing interventions are discussed. / Master of Science / Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is characterized by irrational and persistent fears of potential evaluation and scrutiny by others. For socially anxious youth, a main feature of the disorder is fear of negative evaluation (FNE). Whereas Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) targets FNE, Attention Bias Modification Treatment (ABMT) targets attention bias. However, the degree to which FNE and biased attention are related processes has not been studied. This study examined the relationship between FNE and two indices of attention bias (dot probe and eye-tracking). This study also examines differences in attention bias between a youth with SAD and healthy youth (no psychological diagnoses). Group differences were found for only one attention bias measure (i.e., youth with SAD were quicker to look at anger faces relative to non-anxious youth). In addition, associations between FNE and the attention bias metrics were not statistically significant in either group. Future directions of these findings are discussed.