Social anxiety generally refers to anxiety caused by social situations. Existing research focuses on self-directed social anxiety, that is, individuals feel significant and persistent irrational fear of one or more interpersonal or performance-based social situations, which is characterized by fear of being watched and negatively evaluated by others, and therefore feeling embarrassed or ashamed.
However, some multinational epidemiological studies have found that the prevalence of self-directed social anxiety in Asian populations is much lower than in Western populations. Many researchers have tried to explain this phenomenon. Recent research has discovered that there is another symptom of social anxiety—other-directed social anxiety.
That is, individuals are worried about the potential adverse effects of their own anxiety on others in the shared environment. They are worried that if their anxiety is discovered, it will make others feel anxious, uncomfortable or annoyed, which will lead to some bad consequences.
Compared to Westerners, Chinese people are more likely to express their social anxiety in the form of worries about causing discomfort or offense to others. That is, the way Chinese people express social anxiety is different from self-directed social anxiety defined by diagnostic standards such as the DSM.
Although there are differences in the expression of symptoms of the two forms of social anxiety, according to the psychological cognitive model of social anxiety, both other-directed and self-directed social anxiety emphasize the important role of publicly observable symptoms or public self-consciousness in maintaining social anxiety.
At the same time, these two psychological cognitive models point out that the fear of negative evaluation is the core or potentially important influencing factor in the manifestation of social anxiety symptoms. Public self-awareness and fear of negative evaluation are common influencing factors in the manifestation of two types of social anxiety symptoms.
Compared with the common characteristics of both forms of social anxiety, the differences between the two are more worthy of attention. Taking the existing research together, self-construal may be an important factor in differentiating the two forms of social anxiety. Self-construction is the basis for individuals' subjective interpretation of social situations, which may affect the degree to which individuals pay attention to, perceive, and evaluate threat cues in social situations.
Research on self-construction and social anxiety found that the independent self has a stronger correlation with the self-centered component of social anxiety, while the dependent self is only related to the other-centered component of social anxiety, and other-oriented social anxiety is related to a higher dependent self.
Therefore, the specific role of different components of the self-construal in the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying the two forms of social anxiety can be explored.
Generally speaking, existing research focuses more on self-directed social anxiety, while there is less research on other-directed social anxiety.
Based on this, the study compared the psychological mechanism of the two social anxiety symptoms, thereby more comprehensively revealing the uniqueness of the psychological mechanism of others pointing to social anxiety, and what factors affect the differentiation of social anxiety symptoms.
explores the specific role of differentiation factors in the psychological mechanism of other-directed social anxiety more objectively. Therefore, the introduction of self-directed social anxiety as a reference study can highlight the importance and uniqueness of other-directed social anxiety in this study.
further explores the role of this differentiation factor in the neural processing mechanism of other-directed social anxiety, and verifies the results of the specific role of the differentiation factor in the psychological mechanism of other-directed social anxiety on the neural mechanism. This will help to understand the symptoms of other-directed social anxiety and provide refined consultation and diagnosis and treatment for patients with social anxiety disorder. The
study used a combination of questionnaires and event-related potential experiments in a group of college student subjects. By comparing and constructing the mediating mechanisms of the two social anxiety symptoms, the similarities and differences in their psychological mechanisms were discovered, thus providing a clearer understanding of the potential psychological mechanisms of others' social anxiety.
finally explored the role of self-construction in the psychological and neural mechanisms of other-directed social anxiety, and clarified the unique role of the relational self in the psychological and neural mechanisms of other-directed social anxiety. This aspect helps us understand the underlying psychological mechanisms of different social anxiety symptoms.
On the other hand, the exploration and research on the psychological and neural mechanisms of other-directed social anxiety also provide data support for the localized research on social anxiety in my country; the relationship between the components of relational self-construal and other-directed social anxiety is verified through the study of two research methods and two mechanisms, which helps to improve the reliability of the research results.
The study targets college students, including junior college, undergraduate, master's and doctoral students, and involves 29 provinces and municipalities. In order to reduce the impact of other mental illnesses or not answering questions seriously on the research results, the subjects' data were analyzed and used as a basis for dividing others into high and low social anxiety groups.
Firstly, the questionnaire method was used to conduct a related study on college students' triple self-construal other-oriented social anxiety and self-oriented social anxiety. On this basis, we verified and explored the construction of a mediating model between the fear of negative evaluation between public self-awareness and the manifestation of different social anxiety symptoms.
research found that the mediating mechanism of fear of negative evaluation on public self-awareness and other-directed social anxiety and fear of negative evaluation on public self-awareness and self-directed social anxiety are both established. Public self-awareness can affect both types of social anxiety through fear of negative evaluation.
This is a common feature of the two types of social anxiety, but only in the mediating mechanism of self-directed social anxiety, public self-awareness affects social anxiety entirely through fear of negative evaluation. This is the difference between the two types of social anxiety.
introduced a new variable - triple self-construction (including individual self, relational self and collective self) into the established mediation model to explore the impact of self-construction components on the two psychological mechanisms of social anxiety. It was further found that only relational self has a moderating effect between public self-awareness and other-directed social anxiety.
Specifically, a higher relational self will eventually lead to a higher level of other-directed social anxiety; only the individual self has a moderating role in the mediating mechanism of self-directed social anxiety. Specifically, a lower individual self will eventually lead to a higher level of self-directed social anxiety.
In order to further verify the role of the relational self in the neural mechanism of other-directed social anxiety, the oddball experimental paradigm of three types of self-constructed event-related potential stimuli was used to study whether individuals with high other-directed social anxiety would have advantageous processing of relational self-information, that is, there would be a significant relational self-reference effect.
The results found that individuals with high other-directed social anxiety had lower N2 amplitudes for relational self-stimulation than individuals with low other-directed social anxiety; at the same time, compared with individuals with low other-directed social anxiety, only individuals with high other-directed social anxiety produced larger P3 amplitudes for relational self-stimulation than irrelevant self-stimulation.
Only relational self-stimulation caused differences between high and low other-oriented social anxiety groups, verifying that individuals with high other-oriented social anxiety have a higher level of relational self. They extract and retrieve relational self-information faster, are more sensitive to information about important others, and have a significant relational self-reference effect.
Based on the above, the research has the following contributions and innovations:
(1) Taking into account the cultural differences in my country, we tried to balance the number of college student subjects from the north and south regions, which will help promote the research results and is in line with the direction of localized research on social anxiety in my country;
(2) This study is based on the existing psychological cognitive model of classic other- and self-directed social anxiety, extracts common influencing factors, conducts correlation analysis, and finds that the correlations between key variables are significant. Public self-awareness and fear of negative evaluation are important influencing factors of social anxiety, which are not affected by the fear dimension;
(3) research on others based on theoretical models and related research The mediating mechanism was constructed and verified for social anxiety symptoms. Both mediating models for social anxiety symptoms were established, which provided data support for the theoretical hypothesis of relevant social anxiety psychological mechanisms;
(4) By comparing the mediating mechanisms of the two social anxiety symptoms, this study found that public self-awareness can be feared through negative evaluations. Fear has an impact on social anxiety, but only the core feature of self-directed social anxiety is fear of negative evaluation. The similarities and differences in the psychological mechanisms of the two social anxiety symptoms have been verified in Chinese subjects;
(5) introduced the variable of self-construction into the mediating mechanism of social anxiety symptom expression, and deeply explored the role of triple self-construction in the psychological mechanism of social anxiety symptom expression.
This is helpful to specifically examine the differentiation effect of self-construal on social anxiety, verify previous hypotheses, and is a preliminary exploration of potential factors that lead to the differentiation of social anxiety symptoms empirical research ;
(6) is the first time to apply the self-constructed event-related potential oddball paradigm to the study of other-directed social anxiety, expanding the methods and fields of research on other-directed social anxiety, questionnaire administration and event-related potential Two experimental methods were combined to test the relationship between self-construal components and other-directed social anxiety;
(7) research found that self-construal components have different effects on the symptoms of social anxiety. Relational self only has a moderating effect on other-directed social anxiety. High relational self affects the relationship between public self-awareness and other-directed social anxiety, ultimately causing higher levels of other-directed social anxiety.
Individual self only plays a moderating role in self-directed social anxiety. Low individual self affects the relationship between public self-awareness and fear of negative evaluation and self-directed social anxiety, ultimately causing higher levels of self-directed social anxiety.
This has certain guiding significance for the daily consultation and clinical diagnosis of social anxiety among college students. In the detailed identification of social anxiety, the level of self-constitutive components can be included as reference indicators, so as to provide targeted diagnosis and treatment plans;
(8) Research on neural mechanisms, this study found that there are differences between high and low other-directed social anxiety in N2 and P3 amplitudes. Individuals with high social anxiety have a relational self-reference effect and are more sensitive to information processing of important others.
