Date of Award

11-16-2006

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

F. Richard Ferraro

Abstract

Many cognitive theories of anxiety suggest that anxious individuals are characterized by maladaptive schemata, such that they focus their attention on and make biased interpretations of perceived threat material (e.g., Beck & Emery, 1985, Bower, 1981). In addition, cognitive theories of social phobia, in particular, posit that socially anxious individuals demonstrate attentional and interpretation biases when confronted with signals of social danger or threat as a result of maladaptive schemata (e.g., Beck & Emery, 1985; Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997). Although these models all propose that maladaptive schemata result in faulty information processing which leads to the experience of social anxiety, the precise composition of such abnormalities remains unclear. Furthermore, there is little empirical evidence to confirm that the schemata of socially anxious individuals are different from nonanxious individuals or that maladaptive schemata even exist. Empirical investigations to date have primarily relied solely on paper and pencil self-report inventories (e.g., Glass, Merluzzi, Biever, & Larsen, 1982, Kendall & Hollon, 1989) or script methodology (e.g., Wenzel & Holt, 2000, 2003), in which the findings are difficult to ascertain due to the qualitative nature of the data obtained. The q-sort methodology is one method that has been suggested as a tool to quantitatively define various constructs in psychology, including schema content (e.g., Purath, 2002). To further investigate the nature of schema content, 29 socially anxious and 30 nonanxious individuals completed q-sort tasks for three social or evaluative situations (e.g., going on a date, going to a party, and preparing for and giving a speech). Data obtained from the q-sorts of socially anxious and nonanxious individuals was compared to normative data gathered in a previous study (Purath, 2002) to evaluate schema content. In addition, measurements of latency to complete each of the three q-sort phases as well as the entire q-sort tasks were taken to evaluate processing speed. Results revealed significant differences in the sorts of the socially anxious participants and nonanxious participants when compared to a normative sample for all three q-sort situations. Specifically, the sorts of the socially anxious participants were less correlated with the normative sample than the sorts of the nonanxious participants. However, no differences in measurements of latency were found between the groups for any of the phases or for the entire q-sort task for all three q-sort situations, suggesting that the socially anxious and nonanxious participants' speed of processing while performing the q-sort tasks was similar. Finally, the socially anxious participants rated their personal level of anxiety or discomfort experienced when in social or evaluative situation similar to those presented in the q-sort situations as significantly higher than the nonanxious participants. The results from this study provide evidence that schema content of socially anxious individuals is significantly different from nonanxious individuals when compared to a normative sample representing the general population as measured by the q-sort methodology, even though no differences in processing speed appear to exist.

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