Anticipatory processing plays a role in maintaining social anxiety

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Abstract
The cognitive model of social phobia by Clark and Wells (Social phobia: diagnosis, assessment and treatment) (1995) proposes that, while anticipating a social situation, individuals with social phobia engage in several biased cognitive processes which enhance anticipatory anxiety. Prior to giving a speech, high and low socially anxious individuals (N=40 per group) were instructed to either engage in anticipatory processing (think about what could go right or wrong in the impending situation, predict how they will appear to others and recall past similar situations) or perform a distraction task. Compared to high socially-anxious individuals whose anticipatory processing was inhibited, high socially-anxious participants engaging in anticipatory processing reported more anxiety feelings and predicted more negative overall appearance. High socially-anxious individuals also recalled more negative and less positive information about their public selves, but only when their anticipatory processing was inhibited rather than facilitated. For the low socially-anxious individuals there was no significant difference between the two anticipation conditions on measures of anxiety, self-perception, and memory for emotional information. The results are discussed in relation to the Clark and Wells model.