Abstract
Cognitive models of social anxiety suggest that negative and distorted self-imagery may have an important role in maintaining anxiety. The present study investigated whether emotionally valenced (negative, positive, control) self-imagery affects performance in social situations. Volunteers who scored high and low of social anxiety participated in a speech task. They were allocated to one of three imagery conditions in which participants rehearsed a negative self-image, a positive self-image, or a control self-image prior to giving a speech. The results showed that the participant who had scored high on social anxiety and had rehearsed negative self-imagery rated their anxiety symptoms as being more visible than those who had rehearsed the control self-image. Also, independent assessors rated as poor the speech performance of the participants in the negative self-image condition. Participants who had scored high on social anxiety and had rehearsed a positive self-image reported feeling more anxious as well as holding more negative self-imagery, although they had an adaptive evaluation of their appearance. These results suggest that negative self-imagery has a more negative effect for socially anxious people. Positive self-imagery has different effects from negative self-imagery.
