Katrina P. Jongman-Sereno

Social Anxiety as an Early Warning System: A Refinement and Extension of the Self-Presentation Theory of Social Anxiety

Publisher Summary Although several explanations of social anxiety exist, most of them emphasize one of three sets of antecedents: biological mechanisms involving temperamental, genetic, psychophysiological, and evolutionary factors; cognitive patterns in how people think about themselves and their social worlds; and interpersonal processes that occur in the context of social interaction. The approach of this chapter is decidedly social psychological in that it traces social anxiety to concerns that arise in the context of real, anticipated, and imagined interpersonal interactions. The chapter describes a refinement and extension of the self-presentational theory of social anxiety, a perspective that explains peoples nervousness in social encounters in terms of their concerns about other peoples perceptions of them. Although the self-presentation theory has fared well under the spotlight of empirical research, theoretical developments shed additional light on the self-presentational nature of social anxiety and provide a bridge by which ones understanding of social anxiety may be linked to other phenomena involving interpersonal motives, social emotions, and the self. These theoretical refinements do not contradict or refute self-presentation theory but rather take it to a deeper level, demonstrating precisely why it is that people worry so much about what other people think of them.

Feeling Superior Is a Bipartisan Issue Extremity (Not Direction) of Political Views Predicts Perceived Belief Superiority

Accusations of entrenched political partisanship have been launched against both conservatives and liberals. But is feeling superior about one’s beliefs a partisan issue? Two competing hypotheses exist: the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis (i.e., conservatives are dogmatic) and the ideological-extremism hypothesis (i.e., extreme views on both sides predict dogmatism). We measured 527 Americans’ attitudes about nine contentious political issues, the degree to which they thought their beliefs were superior to other people’s, and their level of dogmatism. Dogmatism was higher for people endorsing conservative views than for people endorsing liberal views, which replicates the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis. However, curvilinear effects of ideological attitude on belief superiority (i.e., belief that one’s position is more correct than another’s) supported the ideological-extremism hypothesis. Furthermore, responses reflecting the greatest belief superiority were obtained on conservative attitudes for three issues and liberal attitudes for another three issues. These findings capture nuances in the relationship between political beliefs and attitude entrenchment that have not been revealed previously.

Cognitive and Interpersonal Features of Intellectual Humility

Four studies examined intellectual humility—the degree to which people recognize that their beliefs might be wrong. Using a new Intellectual Humility (IH) Scale, Study 1 showed that intellectual humility was associated with variables related to openness, curiosity, tolerance of ambiguity, and low dogmatism. Study 2 revealed that participants high in intellectual humility were less certain that their beliefs about religion were correct and judged people less on the basis of their religious opinions. In Study 3, participants high in intellectual humility were less inclined to think that politicians who changed their attitudes were “flip-flopping,” and Study 4 showed that people high in intellectual humility were more attuned to the strength of persuasive arguments than those who were low. In addition to extending our understanding of intellectual humility, this research demonstrates that the IH Scale is a valid measure of the degree to which people recognize that their beliefs are fallible.

The Pursuit of Status: A Self-presentational Perspective on the Quest for Social Value

This chapter focuses on the ways in which people seek status in their interpersonal interactions and relationships. Our analysis conceptualizes status as the degree to which other people perceive that an individual possesses resources or personal characteristics that are important for the attainment of collective goals. That is, people have status to the degree that others perceive that they have instrumental social value. In being based on instrumental social value, status is distinguishable from interpersonal acceptance, which is based on relational value. Thus, the routes to obtaining status and respect are different from those that lead to acceptance and liking. The chapter discusses the central role that self-presentation plays in the pursuit of status, the ways in which people enhance their status through impression management, the features of social situations that moderate how people manage their public images in the pursuit of status, and the dilemma that people sometimes face in balancing their efforts to be respected and gain status with their efforts to be liked and accepted.

Distinguishing Intrapsychic From Interpersonal Motives in Psychological Theory and Research

Many psychological phenomena have been explained primarily in terms of intrapsychic motives to maintain particular cognitive or affective states—such as motives for consistency, self-esteem, and authenticity—whereas other phenomena have been explained in terms of interpersonal motives to obtain tangible resources, reactions, or outcomes from other people. In this article, we describe and contrast intrapsychic and interpersonal motives, and we review evidence showing that these two distinct sets of motives are sometimes conflated and confused in ways that undermine the viability of motivational theories. Explanations that invoke motives to maintain certain intrapsychic states offer a dramatically different view of the psychological foundations of human behavior than those that posit motives to obtain desired interpersonal outcomes. Several phenomena are examined as exemplars of instances in which interpersonal and intrapsychic motives have been inadequately distinguished, if not directly confounded, including cognitive dissonance, the self-esteem motive, biases in judgment and decision making, posttransgression accounts, authenticity, and self-conscious emotions. Our analysis of the literature suggests that theorists and researchers should consider the relative importance of intrapsychic versus interpersonal motives in the phenomena they study and that they should make a concerted effort to deconfound intrapsychic and interpersonal influences in their research.

Self-perceived Authenticity is Contaminated by the Valence of One’s Behavior

Abstract Two studies tested whether people are biased to infer that their positive actions are more authentic than their negative actions. In Study 1, participants identified a positive or negative personal characteristic and assessed the authenticity of past behavior that reflected that characteristic. In Study 2, people imagined themselves performing positive and negative behaviors that they authentically did or did not want to perform. Both studies showed that people’s judgments of the authenticity of their behavior were contaminated by their perceptions of the valence of their behavior even when the objective authenticity of the behavior was controlled. Future research must disentangle authenticity and positivity to determine the degree to which each contributes to positive outcomes that have been attributed to authenticity.

When Rejection Kills: The Central Role of Low Relational Value in School Violence Commentary on: Bullying, Romantic Rejection, and Conflicts with Teachers: The Crucial Role of Social Dynamics in the Development of School Shootings - A Systematic Review

Sommer, Leuschner, and Scheithauer (2014) did an admirable job of reviewing and integrating research on school shootings across a broad array of studies that relied on varied conceptualizations, operational definitions, coding strategies, and samples of shootings. Given the inherent ambiguity of retrospective case studies, the authors assembled convincing evidence to show that school shootings are consistently linked to an identifiable set of problematic social relationships at school, including bullying, rejection by peers and romantic partners, conflicts with teachers, and perceiving oneself to be marginalized or victimized. The authors suggested that these specific phenomena reflect three overriding concepts that promote school violence—conflicts and other negative interactions, social standing, and perpetrator characteristics. Although we agree with Sommer et al.’s basic conclusions, we would like to offer a broad social psychological approach that provides a way of integrating most, if not all, of their findings under a single theoretical umbrella. In our view, all of the factors that Sommer ∗Address for correspondence Mark R. Leary, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA. E-mail: leary@duke.edu et al. identified as precursors of school shootings involve the perception that one has very low relational value. Human beings are highly motivated to be valued as relational partners and group members by other people, presumably because individuals who sought to be valued by other people (and, thus, established supportive social relationships) had a higher likelihood of survival and reproduction throughout human evolution relative than those who were unconcerned about being valued and accepted by other people as group members, friends, mates, and acquaintances (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Thus, a great deal of human behavior is directed toward leading others to regard their relationships with the individual as important or valuable—that is, to maintaining adequate relational value in other people’s eyes (Leary, 2001). In our view, perceptions of low relational value are a central feature of all of the categories of interpersonal problems identified by Sommer et al. Most obviously, both peer rejection and romantic rejection clearly convey that the rejector does not value having a relationship with the rejectee, whether that is a romantic relationship, a friendship, an acquaintanceship, or a group membership.

Why Seemingly Trivial Events Sometimes Evoke Strong Emotional Reactions: The Role of Social Exchange Rule Violations

ABSTRACT People sometimes display strong emotional reactions to events that appear disproportionate to the tangible magnitude of the event. Although previous work has addressed the role that perceived disrespect and unfairness have on such reactions, this study examined the role of perceived social exchange rule violations more broadly. Participants (N = 179) rated the effects of another person’s behavior on important personal outcomes, the degree to which the other person had violated fundamental rules of social exchange, and their reactions to the event. Results showed that perceptions of social exchange rule violations accounted for more variance in participants’ reactions than the tangible consequences of the event. The findings support the hypothesis that responses that appear disproportionate to the seriousness of the eliciting event are often fueled by perceived rule violations that may not be obvious to others.

Measures of Concerns with Public Image and Social Evaluation

People differ in the degree to which they are attuned to other people’s evaluations of them, are motivated to make desired impressions on others, experience distress when their public images are damaged or others’ evaluations of them are unfavorable, and use various tactics to convey public impressions of themselves to others. This chapter focuses on measures of nine personality characteristics that reflect individual differences in such concerns, including public self-consciousness, self-monitoring, approval motivation, social anxiety, social scrutiny fear, social physique anxiety, embarrassability, self-presentation tactics, and impression management styles. Each measure is described, along with psychometric information regarding its reliability and validity.