The Gift of Introversion

their blushing. That social anxiety is associated most strongly with self-perceived
blushing is also important for cognitive models of blushing and social anxiety, indicating
that socially anxious individuals use both internal cues and other types of information to
draw conclusions about how they are coming across.
Attention Bias
Individuals who tend to experience more social anxiety turn their attention away from
threatening social information and toward themselves, prohibiting them from challenging
negative expectations about others and maintaining high levels of social anxiety. A
socially anxious individual perceives rejection from a conversational partner, turns his or
her attention away, and never learns that the individual is actually
welcoming. Individuals who are high in social anxiety tend to show increased initial
attention toward negative social cues such as threatening faces followed by attention
away from these social cues, indicating a pattern of hypervigilance followed by
avoidance. Attention in social anxiety has been measured using the dot-probe
paradigm, which presents two faces next to one another. One face has an emotional
expression and the other has a neutral expression, and when the faces disappear, a
probe appears in the location of one of the faces. This creates a congruent condition in
which the probe appears in the same location as the emotional face, and an
incongruent condition. Participants respond to the probe by pressing a button and
differences in reaction times reveal attentional biases. This task has revealed mixed
results, with some studies finding no differences between socially anxious individuals
and controls, some studies finding avoidance of all faces, and others finding vigilance
toward threat faces. There is some evidence that vigilance toward threat faces can be
detected during short but not longer exposures to faces, indicating a possible initial
hypervigilance followed by avoidance. The Face-in-the-crowd task shows that
individuals with social anxiety are faster at detecting an angry face in a predominantly
neutral or positive crowd or slower at detecting happy faces than a nonanxious
person. Results overall using this task are mixed and this task may not be able to detect
hypervigilance toward angry faces in social anxiety.
Focus on the self has been associated with increased social anxiety and negative
affect, however there are two types of self-focus: In public self focus, one shows
concern for the impact of one's own actions on others and their impressions. This type
of self-focus predicts greater social anxiety. Other more private forms of selfconsciousness
(e.g., egocentric goals) are associated with other types of negative
affect.
Basic science research suggests that cognitive biases can be modified. Attention bias
modification training has been shown to temporarily impact social anxiety.
Measures
Trait social anxiety is most commonly measured by self-report. This method possesses
limitations, however subjective responses are the most reliable indicator of a subjective
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