The measurement of anxiety in an analogue social situation

Established a measurement procedure for social anxiety by exposing 34 male undergraduates (17 socially anxious and 17 socially nonanxious) to 3 increasingly stressful phases of a social interaction situation. Self-report and behavioral measures indicated that the session was indeed increasingly anxiety provoking for the total group. Posttest self-report measures discriminated high- and low-social-anxiety groups (p < .025), while behavioral measures (word production, overt anxiety signs, and speech disfluencies) did not. The complex relationship of anxiety and its overt manifestations in social situations and the role of an autonomic perception subject characteristic in determining that relationship are briefly discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).