Mental health articles

social phobia Cognitive Symptoms.
In terms of broad assessment, social phobics report more negative thoughts and less positive thoughts than nonanxious controls before and during a social interaction. More specifically, Hartman found that the thoughts of social phobics fell into four factor analytically derived categories: general physiological discomfort and social inadequacy, concern with others’ awareness of distress, fear of negative evaluation, and perceptions of autonomic arousal. A number of studies showed that the thoughts and beliefs entertained by social phobics about their own appearance or performance are generally not accurate.
More specifically, people with social phobia, it has been found, rate their own performance significantly worse than that performance is rated by independent judges, despite the fact that they can rate other people’s performance accurately. Similarly, people with social phobia see themselves as less attractive than others, even though their attractiveness is not rated any differently by independent observers.

Tags: cognitive, phobia, social phobia, symptoms