As with social anxiety, people with high social appearance anxiety (SAA) might experience increased perceptions of being looked at by others and elevated levels of self-focussed evaluative attention (SFEA). This study tested whether individuals with high SAA perceive more people look at them than do those with low SAA, and whether SFEA increases this perception. A sample of 52 low SAA and 48 high SAA participants completed questionnaires and experimental tasks online. Participants estimated the proportion of people looking at them in numerous matrices of faces. A control task of matrices of clocks was used. SFEA was experimentally manipulated. Those high in SAA estimated more people looking at them, and reported higher trait self-focussed attention. Increasing SFEA increased these individual’s estimates of faces looking at them but did not affect perceptions of non- social stimuli. Implications for clinical interventions and the body image literature are discussed. Future lines of research are recommended.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:725653 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Warren, Hanne |
| Publisher | Canterbury Christ Church University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://create.canterbury.ac.uk/16355/ |
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