The relationship between social anxiety and being
judgemental of others in social situations
Roos Klaasman 6065775
Bachelorproject: Final version 27-05-2016
Supervisor: Jamie Elsey Universiteit van Amsterdam Amount of words abstract: 134 Amount of words: 5271
Abstract
Most studies on social anxiety focus on the link between Social Anxiety Disorder and the fear of judgement from others. The present study however investigated if there was a relationship between being socially anxious and being judgemental of others who perform poorly, or who display the same issues people with social anxiety are concerned about, in social situations. To measure judgement participants were asked to judge others in negative and positive social situations written in vignettes (Experiment 1, N=91) and shown in videos (Experiment 2,
N=42). To measure social anxiety both groups were asked to fill in the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) and the Negative Self Portrayal Scale (NSPS). Results in experiment 1
showed that there was a possible relationship between being socially anxious and being more judgmental of others in negative social situations.
Introduction
Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is categorised in the DSM-V as an anxiety disorder, together with disorders like Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The main symptom for people with SAD is feeling
uncomfortable in a variety of social situations and being scared of being criticized by others (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Their anxiety can sometimes be noticed through physical appearance and behaviour, like sweating extensively or avoiding eye contact (Stein & Stein, 2008). Socially anxious individuals tend to be very shy when they meet new people and although they may crave social contact, they often do not know how to behave in groups possibly stemming from low self-esteem and high self-criticism. Further, depressive
symptoms can be one of the side effects of SAD (Stein & Stein, 2008), which is explicable since a lack of proper social contact can make a person feel isolated especially if that social contact is actually desired.
Studies in the US show that SAD can be a very persistent disorder with a lifetime prevalence of 12.1%, and research in other western nations report similar rates (Stein & Stein, 2008). For the Netherlands 43 of the women and 31 of the men for every 1000 inhabitants experience social anxiety. Those numbers are higher than other high prevalence anxiety disorders like Panic Disorder (Jaarprevalentie angststoornissen, 2011). The disorder typically develops early in life, but there is no consensus on what the actual causes are. Research on heritability, conducted with twins, has shown however that social anxiety traits are heritable so there might be biological factor involved (Stein & Stein, 2008). The treatment for the disorder is divers, consisting of different forms of drug therapy and psychotherapy, where the applied psychotherapy mostly consists of cognitive therapy (Stein & Stein, 2008).
These forms of cognitive therapy are all based on three of the most influential cognitive theories on what happens on a cognitive level with people who display social
anxiety (Musa & Lépine, 2000). These are the theories of Beck, Emery and Greenberg (1985), Clark and Wells (1995) and Rapee and Heimberg (1997). Although all these theories show diversity, they do have the same core ideas on what constitute the cognitions of people with social anxiety. They all emphasise that when a person with SAD is faced with a social anxious situation he or she will start the process of self-focussing which results in
dysfunctional beliefs about the self and others and unrealistic images of reality. They are also constantly preoccupied with the idea of being criticized by others. These cognitions increase anxiety and make it impossible to see things differently, which creates a vicious circle of anxiety (Musa & Lépine, 2000).
All these three theories have been supported by different lines of research (Musa & Lépine, 2000) and, as explained before, almost all of the cognitive therapy forms are based on these. Still, treatment for SAD is for some reason not completely helpful for everyone
(Moscovitch, 2009), which makes it one of the most persuasive anxiety disorders (Stein en Stein, 2008). This shows that there still is a lot of indistinctness about the possible
mechanisms of the disorder and the existing treatments. While on the one hand you could suggest that more research about treatment is needed, it might be even more essential to learn more about the cognitions of people with SAD, since it is the content of thoughts that form the window for treatment design. There could be undiscovered, or never considered, core thoughts linked to the disorder and insight in these might facilitate and improve treatment and recovery. That is why this article will explore one of these possible core thoughts: judgement of others. The main focus is to investigate whether people who show a high level of social anxiety symptoms are, in general, more judgemental about others in social situations than people who show low levels of social anxiety symptoms. Through research it has become
clear that people with SAD are very self-critical; Cox, Fleet and Stein (2004) found a strong association between self-criticism and social phobia in a large representative sample. Since people with SAD are this self-critical it is possible they are also critical about others, resulting in being more judgemental.
There are a couple of different possible theories to support this idea. The first one is based on the article by Clark (2001). In this article the authors describe different kinds of safety behaviours and the role they play in social anxiety. When a person with SAD feels that a feared outcome might become reality they perform behaviours that they believe can prevent this fear from becoming reality (Clark, 2001). For example, when someone fears that they will start to blush and get noticed by others they might start to wear clothes that will cover their face, like a high collar (Clark, 2001). Other examples of safety behaviours are
minimising talking, avoiding eye-contact or presenting a positive image through excessive self-monitoring (Plasencia, Alden and Taylor, 2011). These kinds of actions will make people feel a little more comfortable in socially feared situations. Although all of these methods are internally focused, being judgemental of others, could serve as a form of safety behaviour as well. This time enacting in the safety behaviour might not have the goal of protecting the self from others, but of protecting the self from the disorder. Via judgment people with social anxiety might place the focus away from themselves, and their own perceived flaws, and onto others. This way they might feel not as uncomfortable as they normally would in social situations.
Experimental research supports this possibility (Curtis and Miller, 1986). In a study by Clark (2001) a group of students had to rate each other after a conversation and they found that people, who received (fake) negative feedback from the other person afterwards, were rated as less warm and friendly after the second conversation. This shows that it is a common reaction for people to be less friendly to people who we think don't like us to protect
ourselves. So people with SAD, who assume that others find them incompetent, might react by using safety behaviours, hence being judgmental, because they feel they are being judged themselves. A second research that supports this possibility was conducted by Taylor and Alden (2010). In two experiments to examine the link between safety behaviour and social judgement in SAD they found that participants who were allowed to express safety behaviour in social anxious situations were more self-judgemental then participants who weren't allowed to perform safety behaviour. This might suggest a relationship between self-judgement and safety behaviour in which safety behaviour results in being more self-judgemental. Possibly it results in being more judgemental about others as well.
A second idea is based around Theory of Mind (ToM). ToM is the ability to
comprehend the mental states of others (Hezel & McNally, 2014). People with social anxiety symptoms may have a distorted ToM in that they put too much emphasis on the ideas and feelings of others and this way their social anxiety will be maintained. This idea has been supported by the research of Hezel and McNally (2014). They found that on two ToM tasks participants with SAD performed worse than participants who were not socially anxious, and people with SAD attributed more intense emotions and meaning to what others thought and felt (Hezel & McNally, 2014). This bias, for social hyper vigilance, was also found in the research of Washburn (2012). Since socially anxious individuals tend to give that much attention to others and their thoughts and feelings, they might be more judgemental about those others. Or, because they feel they are being judged all the time, they will judge other people quicker. A good description about the link between ToM and judgement has been found written by somebody with SAD on a social anxiety forum:
There is a big problem with this; that being that theories of mind are all based on the mind of the person creating them. Accepting that this is true, I am forced to come to the conclusion
that the source of social anxiety must be based on one's own habit of critiquing others (thereby causing you to assume they will behave similarly). Think about it; if your theory of mind tells you that others are constantly criticising you then this most ultimately be based on the fact that you yourself are too critical.
(Social Anxiety Support, 2009, September 10).
So, the fact that people with SAD think that others are critiquing them all the time, which is one on the main symptoms of SAD, could stem from the possibility that they themselves are too critical of others. Being critical could result in being more judgemental in social
situations.
These two described possibilities support the idea that there might be an association between social anxiety and being judgmental, but there is also research conducted that contradicts this idea. In this research, performed by Cooper, Doehrmann, Fang, Gerlach, Hoijtink and Hofmann (2014), 98 undergraduates were asked to rate 198 faces on
trustworthiness. They also completed social anxiety questionnaires to asses the severity of their social fear. According to the results social anxiety did not influence judgement of trustworthiness. In this research however we don't just look at judgement in general, but at judgment in social situations, so the main focus is different. Still, it is interesting to see that other research indicates there is no link between levels of SAD and being judgemental of others.
Because of the contradictions in research and the mixed results of therapy
(Moscovitch, 2009), the aim of this research is to assess whether there is a link between social anxiety and being judgmental of the social performance of others. The hypothesis here is that people with a high level of social anxiety are more judgmental about others who perform poorly, or display the same issues they are concerned about in social situations than people
with low/lower levels of social anxiety. The emphasis in this hypothesis lies on the words 'the issues they are concerned about' which, in this research, are based on the core fears described by Moscovitch (2009). According to him the core fears of social anxiety are: concerns about social skills and behaviour, concerns about visible sings of anxiety and concerns about physical appearance. It is on these issues that we expect people with higher levels of social anxiety to express more judgement.
This is researched by measuring levels of social anxiety with the Social Phobia
Inventory (SPIN), and levels of judgement by asking people to judge others in social
situations which are presented in different vignettes in one experiment (N=91) and shown in videos in the other (N= 42). We decided to use these two different forms to test whether any possible associations found in the vignettes could be extended to other stimuli as well. It is expected (for both groups) that the participants who score high on the SPIN will also score higher on the judgemental scores on the negative social scenarios, in which people display one of the core fears. We also expect that there is no relation between the scores on the SPIN and the judgemental scores on the positive social situations, since in those situations no core fears are displayed by others.
Besides measuring the SPIN we also want participants to complete two other
questionnaires, the Negative Self Portrayal Scale (NSPS) and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The NSPS is taken to measure the level of self-judgement and this questionnaire is based on the core fears described by Moscovitch (2009). This NSPS is also an effective way to measure social anxiety. The expectation for the NSPS are the same as for the SPIN, so people who score higher on the NSPS score are expected to score higher on the judgement scores in negative social situations as well, but no relationship between the scores is expected when we look at the positive social situations. This is based on the earlier described research of Cox, Fleet and Stein (2004). In addition, the BDI is extracted because there could be a link
between the amount of depressive symptoms, which are often a side effect of social anxiety (Stein & Stein, 2008), and being more judgemental. So depressive symptoms might act as a confound.
Methods
Participants
The participants were 133 Dutch psychology students between the ages of 18-31, from the University of Amsterdam (UvA). The study was composed of two experiments. Firstly, experiment 1, the vignette study. For this experiment the participants were students who were selected to participate in a 'test week'. This is a yearly event, organised by the UvA, where students participate in a couple of different studies. Secondly, experiment 2, the video study where participants were selected through UvA lab registration system. This is a website from the UvA where students can post their research online so other students can respond and participate. No participant was part of both experiments and all the participants received a reward in the form of a participant point.
Materials
In the experiment 1 participants received two different kinds of questionnaires, the
Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN), to measure social anxiety symptoms and the Negative Self Portrayal Scale (NSPS), to measure self-image/how self-critical someone is. Besides these
they also received a collection of different vignettes (descriptions of social situations) where the participants were asked to give their opinion about the person in the social situations. This way their judgemental levels were measured. In experiment 2 participants received the same
questionnaires, but in addition the BDI as well and in this experiment the level of judgement was measured by asking their opinion on different videos.
SPIN
The SPIN consists of 17 items. The questions evaluate fear (among other things of people in authority and of being criticised), physiological discomfort (blushing or sweating) and avoidance (among other thins of talking to strangers) (Connor, Davidson, Churchill, Sherwood, Weisler & FOA, 2000). Participants are asked to indicate to which extent they were bothered by each item in the previous week and each of the 17 items is rated on a Likert scale from 0 (not at all) to 4 (extremely). The full-scale score range is from 0 to 68 (Connor, et al., 2000). The higher the score the more social anxious someone is. The psychometric properties of the SPIN, including test-retest reliability, internal consistency, convergent validity, divergent validity, construct validity and predictive validity where all found to be good (Connor et al., 2000). For this study the Dutch version of the questionnaire was used, translated by Boelen and Reijntjes (2009), which has the same full-scale score range. Cronbach's a of the Dutch version was 0.93 (Boelen & Reijntjes, 2009). An example of an item is: 'Ik ben bang voor autoriteiten' (Boelen & Reijntjes, 2009).
NSPS
The NSPS, is designed to discover to what extent people are concerned that specific, to them deficient, behaviour will be seen and evaluate by others in social situations
(Moscovitch & Huyder, 2011). The NSPS consist of 27 items with scoring options ranging from 1 (not at all concerned) to 5 (extremely concerned). Higher scores represent higher self-portrayal concerns. The NSPS was found to have good test-retest reliability, internal
there was no good Dutch translation of the NSPS available yet, the questionnaire was translated for this study by the researchers who were involved; all of them fluent in Dutch. Each made a translation of the items which were put into a questionnaire and from the different translation option the same researchers choose the translation they preferred. The Dutch NSPS consist of 27 items and has the same scoring options as the English version. The total score range is 27-135. An example of an item is: 'In sociale situaties (waarin ik mij
angstig voel), zal het duidelijk worden voor andere mensen dat ik stotter'.
Vignettes
The vignettes were written by one of the researchers, and were based on different social anxiety studies, mainly the study by Moscovitch, Rodebaugh and Hesch (2012). The vignettes were translated in Dutch by the other researchers and all checked each others versions to make sure the best translations were included in the study. There were 12 vignettes in total, 6 who described a positive social situation, a situation in which a person displayed himself in a positive way in a social situation, and 6 who described a negative social situation in which a person displays himself in a negative way. Two of the six had signs of anxiety as primary core fear, two had social competences and the last two had psychical attractiveness as core fear. These correspond to the core fears designed by Moscovitch
(Moscovitch, 2009) which were also the basis for the NSPS. An example of a vignette ending with a positive sentence, with the core fear of psychical attractiveness, is: 'Je reist met de
tram. De persoon die voor je zit begint haar spullen te verzamelen. Terwijl ze zich omdraait om uit de tram te kunnen stappen valt je op dat ze een mooie en egale huid heeft.' An example
of a vignette with an ending with a negative sentence, with the core fear sings of anxiety, is:
'Je bent op het huwelijk van een familielid. De 'best man' wordt gevraagd om een speech te houden. Tijdens het praatje begint hij duidelijk te zweten en struikelt hij over zijn woorden.'
The order of the vignettes was randomized. For every vignette the participant had to score whether the person in this scenario is an anxious person, a physically attractive person and a socially competent person. For all the questions the scoring options range from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). The full-scale score range is from 12 to 84 and a lower score indicates being more judgemental. The psychometric properties of these vignettes have not yet been established.
Video's
The videos were only shown to participants in experiment 2. There were 8 different video clips; in 4 of them the main character would make an awkward mistake in a social situation and in the other 4 the main character would show socially desirable behaviour. The order of the videos was randomized. Different kinds of clips were used; scenes from
Hollywood movies and scenes from TV-shows and the length of the videos was around 2 minutes. The scoring options were the same as for the vignettes, but the full-score range was different, namely 8-56. A lower score indicates being more judgemental.
BDI
Participants in this experiment also received the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). The BDI is a questionnaire designed to measure the level of depression. The Dutch version consists of 21 items which are scored on a scale of 0 (never) to 3 (so extreme I can't stand it) to indicate how much they experience the symptom described. The total score range is 0-63 and a higher score indicates higher levels of depression. The validity and reliability of the BDI are good, and an example of a item is: 'Treurigheid, Pessimisme and Verlies van plezier' (Beck Depression Inventory –Second Edition (BDI-II-NL) 2016).
Procedure
At the beginning of the study participants received information about the procedure so it was clear what was expected of them. To prevent bias, the participants were not told the hypothesis of the study and before starting they were asked to sign the informed consent form. In experiment 1 participants were asked to read the vignettes and answered questions about those, which took about 25-30 minutes, and after that they received the Dutch versions of the SPIN, and the NSPS which took about 5 minutes each, so 10 minutes in total. Participants in experiment 2 were asked to watch the video clips and answered questions about them, which took about 25-30 minutes, and after that they received the Dutch version of the SPIN, NSPS and the BDI which took about 15 minutes in total to fill in. At the end of the study the participants were debriefed.
Results
Outliers and Assumptions
Out of the 133 participants there were no outliers on the SPIN or the NSPS, so the data of all the participants in both groups were used in the following analyses. There was one outlier on the BDI with a score of 57, but since this score was within the full-range score of 0-63 and removing the case did not change anything about the significance level of the results, the score was not removed. First the assumption of normal distribution was tested for the SPIN. In both groups the data was not distributed normally when we looked at the histograms and also the result of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test of normality were significant for the video study, D(42) = 0.15, p=0.02 and the vignette study, D(91) = 0.17, p<.001, indicating an abnormal distribution. However, when we looked at the data with Q-Q plots the observed values did not seem that far removed from the expected values and the values of skewness
and kurtios were not large, indicating a not that big deviation from normality (Field, 2013). Concluded was that the assumption of normality was not significant violated. In addition we also found that the Spearman correlations were in agreement with the Pearson correlations.
Manipulation check
This was executed to see if there was a difference between the sum of reactions on the positive video's, in which the character was portrayed in a positive way in the social situation, and the sum of the reactions on the negative video's, in which the character was portrayed in a negative way. Expected was a significant difference between the two. This was tested with a paired sample t-tests. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the means of the two groups in the vignette study: the scores on the negative vignettes (M=65.96, SE=6.51) and the positive vignettes (M=97.20, SE=8.84) were significantly different, t(90)= -26.77, p<.001. The same was true for the video study: on average there was a lower score on the negative video's (M=38.45, SE=4.74) than on the positive video's (M=70.45, SE=5.01),
t(41)=28.95, p<.001. These lower scores indicate a harsher judgement on the persons in the
negative vignettes and videos than on the persons in the positive vignettes and videos. So the manipulation worked; people in the positive scenarios were generally viewed more positively, and people in the negative scenarios were generally viewed more negatively.
The relationship between social anxiety and judgment of others
Experiment 1: The vignette study
The second step in the main analyses was executing several different correlations with the SPIN and the NSPS in the vignette study. Expected was that there would be a negative correlation between the scores on the SPIN and the Negative Global Score, the total score in the negative scenarios, since we argued that the more socially anxious people are, the more
judgemental they should be of others in negative scenario's. Also we expected that we would find no correlation between the scores on the SPIN and the Positive Global Score, the total score in the positives scenarios, since we argued that socially anxious people are only more judgemental in specific situations, namely, when others display the kinds of things that they themselves are worried about others will judge them on. The expectations for the correlations with the NSPS were exactly the same. In Table 1 all the mean scores, the standard deviation and the score range of the SPIN, the NSPS and the Negative and the Positive Global Score for the experiment 1 are displayed.
Table 1. Mean, standard deviations and range of scores for the scores on the SPIN, the NSPS,
the Negative Global Score and the Positive Global Score for the sample of Experiment 1 (N=91).
M SD Range
SPIN 12.41 10.81 0 - 52 NSPS 50.7 18.12 27 - 102 Negative Global Score 65.96 6.51 51 - 83 Positive Global Score 97.2 8.84 74 - 126
There was a significant negative correlation between the scores on the SPIN and the Negative Global Score, r = -.27, p =0.01 (see Figure 1), and a non-significant correlation between the scores on the SPIN and the Positive Global Score, r = -.09, p =0.39. When we look at the correlations with the NSPS there was a significant negative correlations between the scores on the NSPS and the Negative Global Score, r = -.024, p = 0.02 (see Figure 2), and a non-significant relationship between the scores on the NSPS and the Positive Global Score,
Figure 1. Correlation between the SPIN Total Score and the Negative Global Score for the
vignette study.
Experiment 2: The video study
There were also a couple of different correlations conducted with the scores from the video study. In Table 2 all the mean scores, the standard deviation and the score range of the SPIN, the NSPS and the Negative and the Positive Global Score for experiment 2 are
displayed.
Table 2. Mean, standard deviations and range of scores for the scores on the SPIN, the NSPS,
the Negative Global Score and the Positive Global Score for the sample of Experiment 2 (N=42).
M SD Range
SPIN 13.1 9.2 1 - 36 NSPS 47.93 15.38 27 - 90 Negative Global Score 38.45 5.01 28 - 49 Positive Global Score 70.45 4.74 59 - 81
Looking at the scores on the SPIN there was a non-significant correlation between the scores on the SPIN and the Negative Global Score, r = -.03, p =0.85 and a non-significant correlation between the scores on the SPIN and the Positive Global Score, r = -.003, p = 0.98. For the NSPS was a non-significant correlation between the scores on the NSPS and the Negative Global Score, r = .02, p =0.88 and a non-significant correlation between the scores on the NSPS and the Positive Global Score, r = .15, p = 0.35. All the correlations were Pearson correlations.
In addition we also wanted to check if depression could be a confound variable for being more judgemental. However, we only conducted the BDI in the video study and none of the results found in this study were significant. This way it was not possible to check this
assumption. We did however find a significant correlation between the NSPS and the BDI, r = .43, p = 0.004, which could indicate that there is some sort of relation between being self-critical and levels of depression. Because of this finding it would be interesting to see if in future research depression does turn out to be a confound in studies which are more controlled, like the vignette study.
Discussion
The purpose of this research was to receive more insight in the cognitions of people with SAD by researching if they are more judgmental. The hypothesis was that people with high level of social anxiety are more judgmental about others who perform poorly, or display the same issues they are concerned about in social situations than people with low/lower levels of social anxiety. In this research we did find support for this hypothesis in experiment 1. Results in this experiment showed that people who are more socially anxious are more judgemental of others in negative social situations. We did not find this link in the positive described social situations, which was as expected as well. In experiment 2 however none of the results were significant or as expected. Limitations of this experiment will be discussed shortly.
Most of the existing research on SAD cognitions so far has been focused on fear of judgement from others. The three most important theories on SAD, from Beck, Emery and Greenberg (1985), Clark and Wells (1995) and Rapee and Heimberg (1997) are all based on this idea. However, the possibility of SAD patients being more judgemental of others
themselves has not yet received a lot of attention, although investigating this topic is clinically important. Research could be a way to discover new, unknown, cognitions of people with SAD and since it are these cognitions that form the core of the construction of therapy,
treatment could be improved by receiving new insight in cognitions. This is important since right now not all forms of cognitive therapies are as effective for everybody (Moscovitch, 2009). This research makes it own, new attribution to the study on SAD by displaying new insights on the cognitions of people with SAD, which could lead to more effective forms of therapy.
The exact cause of this finding though has not been established yet. There where however a few possible causes put forward. The fist one being that being more judgemental can serve as safety behaviour for people with SAD by placing the attention away from themselves and on to others. Experimental research supports this idea (Curtis and Miller, 1986). The second idea was that people who are socially anxious have a distorted ToM which makes them put too much emphasis on the feelings and ideas of others. This idea was
supported by research as well (Hezel & McNally, 2014). Since both ideas are possible, researching what the exact cause of this finding could be is a very interesting topic for future research.
Although a lot of support for the hypothesis was found, the earlier described results should be analysed with care because the present study was not without it limitations. A first limitation was the small amount of participants in the video group, namely 42. When we looked at the results, none of them were significant in this group which could stem from the low amount of participants. When not enough participants are included in a study it could be difficult to find results.
It seems however that there is much larger problem with experiment 2 than just the low amount of participants. When we look at the difference between experiment 1 and experiment 2 it is clear that the first one is way more controlled and robust than the second one. The videos that were selected for experiment 2 were all very different on items like music, editing and the amount of people in the scene. Also, some of the participants might
have been familiar with the actors or the scenes themselves which could have coloured their view. In addition there were a lot of differences between the positive and the negative videos. In future research it might still be possible to conduct the same kind of research, but the selecting of the video should be done with more care and consideration to make sure the study is more controlled. If we still not find any significant results it might be the case that videos do not have the same effect on people with SAD as the vignettes. Possibly videos makes them feel more estranged from the social situations while reading makes the situation come alive in their head, which possible makes them emphasise more. Researching if there is a difference between the effect of the videos and the vignettes is highly recommended in future research.
A third limitation of this research is that generalisation of the results might be difficult due to the fact that the data were collected from a very young audience which consisted of mostly women. The mean age in experiment 1 was 19.94, with 70 women and 20 men and the mean age in experiment 2 was 20.90, with 36 women and 6 men. It might be possible that women display different levels of social anxiety and judgement than men, because of different factors, mainly self-confidence. When we look at the score of the NSPS in the vignette study there is a significant difference. On average, women experienced a more negative self
portrayal (M=53.41, SE=2.22) than men (M=41.25, SE=3.04), t(41.34)= -3.23, p=0.002. This shows that there could be a difference between men and women when it comes to self-image which could affect the results. That is why it is recommended that in future research the number of male and female participants will be equal.
To conclude, in this research we did find a link between social anxiety and being judgemental of others in negative social situations. In the vignette study, both the SPIN and the NSPS show the exact correlation we expected, but we did not find these results in the video study, which might be because of the limitations of this study. The results of the vignette study however confirm our hypothesis and this opens the doors to a lot of new
studies. Studies that research if the results will be found again when the study, gets replicated, is conducted with more male participants or, is conducted with a more controlled video study. By continuing to build on the results that have been found in this research, it might be
possible to, in the future, incorporate the findings on these cognitions into therapy. This could give patients and clinicians more tools to deal with the disorder. This way the clinical work field could change the life of a lot of people by making them less socially anxious and more secure so they can live their life to the fullest.
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