Individual Differences Research

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Individual Differences Research > Volume 19 (2021) > e19003

"My name's Jasper and I'm a Sagittarius": Threat, Social Anxiety and Their Impact on Making a Personal Introduction Videotape

Todd Jackson, Karen Eglitis

Abstract

This experimental study investigated how different sources of potential threat, physiological feedback and task structure, interact with social anxiety to influence responses during an impression management stressor. Forty-one socially anxious and 46 less anxious university students were randomly assigned to high- or low-threat conditions before recording personal introduction videotapes. Participants completed self-report measures of appraisal and coping self-statements before and after the task. Results showed that socially anxious individuals (SAis) in the high-threat condition, rated the task as more threatening, reported fewer positive coping statements, and adopted a more defensive orientation post-task than SAis in the low-threat condition or less anxious participants. Findings suggest that SAis are particularly sensitive to internal and external threat cues during social evaluation and that even modest increases in structure and predictability may buffer anxiety in performance settings.