Stressed for success: Do social phobics fear positive evaluation?

This study investigated the role of fear of positive evaluation (FPE) in social anxiety. Thirty socially anxious and 40 non-anxious undergraduate students were asked to predict the level of anxiety they expected to experience during a brief impromptu speech task. After completing the speech task, participants were given bogus positive feedback, bogus negative feedback, or no feedback about their performance. Participants were then asked to predict the level of anxiety they expected to experience during a second similar speech task. The pre-feedback and post-feedback self-predicted anxiety levels of participants in the various feedback conditions were compared. It was expected that self-predicted anxiety levels of socially anxious participants would increase following the receipt of positive feedback and negative feedback and would not change significantly in socially anxious participants who did not receive any feedback. As expected, self-predicted anxiety levels did not change significantly when socially anxious participants received no feedback. Results also showed that self-predicted anxiety levels of socially anxious participants did increase following the receipt of negative feedback, but this result was not significant. Unexpectedly, results showed that the self-predicted anxiety levels of socially anxious participants significantly decreased following the receipt of positive feedback.