Objective: Social phobia is considered as one of the most common anxiety disorders. The researchers have been looking for the basic mechanism behind it, since determining these factors can be influential in prevention and treatment. In recent years, some of the most important personality and cognitive correlates of social phobia including neuroticism, fear of negative evaluation, anxiety sensit...

Previous studies of social phobia have reported an increased vigilance to social threat cues but also an avoidance of socially relevant stimuli such as eye gaze. The primary aim of this study was to examine attentional mechanisms relevant for perceiving social cues by means of abnormalities in scanning of facial features in patients with social phobia. In two novel experimental paradigms, patie...

It has been suggested that social phobia may be characterized by two interpretation biases. First, a tendency to interpret ambiguous social events in a negative fashion. Second, a tendency to interpret unambiguous but mildly negative social events in a catastrophic fashion. To assess this possibility, patients with generalized social phobia, equally anxious patients with another anxiety disorde...

This study investigated the therapeutic factors influencing the outcome of cognitive behavioral group treatment for social phobia and the most helpful therapeutic component. Fifty psychiatric outpatients who were diagnosed with social phobia according to the DSM-IV criteria were chosen as subjects. Patients were asked to complete the Yalom's Curative Factors Questionnaire and Therapeutic Compon...

OBJECTIVE This study seeks to examine the incidence of social phobia in the general population and to establish a number of risk indicators. METHOD Data were derived from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS) which is a population based prospective study (n=7076). A sample of adults aged 18-64 years (n=5618) were re-interviewed 1 year later using Composite Interna...

The present study aimed at investigating how frequently and intensely depersonalization/derealization symptoms occur during a stressful performance situation in social phobia patients vs. healthy controls, as well as testing hypotheses about the psychological predictors and consequences of such symptoms. N=54 patients with social phobia and N=34 control participants without mental disorders wer...

Social anxiety disorder is an anxiety disorder in which a person has an excessive and unreasonable fear of social situations. Social anxiety and self-consciousness arise from a fear of being closely watched and criticized by others. Clinical observation also suggests that some persons with social anxiety disorder may experience intense anger at others upon perceived negative evaluation or when ...