تجزیه و تحلیل چندسطحی از نظریه خودارائه گری اضطراب اجتماعی: دیدگاه های مفهوم سازی، جهت مند و تعاملی

Abstract According to self-presentation theory, social anxiety is determined by impression motivation and impression efficacy. However, researchers have not evaluated the theory’s applicability from contextual and dispositional perspectives in an integrated manner, nor have they examined a fundamental interactive facet of the theory. In three studies, we examined these issues using hypothetical situations and experience sampling methodology. Results demonstrated the theory’s applicability at the contextual and dispositional level, providing insight into people’s general tendencies to experience social anxiety and their momentary experiences of social anxiety. Results also revealed the predicted interaction between impression motivation and impression efficacy – high impression efficacy weakens the association between impression motivation and social anxiety. These studies expand understanding of the personological and situational factors that drive social anxiety.

1. Introduction At both clinical and non-clinical levels, social anxiety has important psychological and interpersonal consequences. In an effort to understand and manage people’s anxiety in social encounters, psychologists have examined social anxiety from various biological, social, developmental, motivational, and cognitive perspectives. From the perspectives of personality and social psychology, the self-presentation theory of social anxiety highlights two factors affecting social anxiety – one’s motivation to create specific impressions in others and one’s perceptions of efficacy in doing so (Leary and Kowalski, 1995 and Schlenker and Leary, 1982). According to self-presentation theory, social anxiety results from high levels of impression motivation and low levels of impression efficacy. In the current studies, we examine two issues regarding social anxiety and the self-presentation theory of social anxiety. First, we evaluate the self-presentation theory of social anxiety from a within-person and between-person perspective, examining impression motivation and impression efficacy simultaneously as predictors. Second, we examine a facet of the theory that has not yet been reported in the literature, specifically a proposed interactive effect of impression motivation and impression efficacy on social anxiety. These issues have implications for the understanding of social anxiety and for an integration of contextualized and dispositional perspectives on psychology more broadly. 1.1. Self-presentation theory of social anxiety According to the general view of self-presentation theory, much of what we do and how we feel arises from the interpersonal impressions we wish to create. Social life is related to the impressions that people form of one another and the ways in which they react to those impressions. Therefore, people often try to control the impression they make on others, a process known as self-presentation (Goffman, 1959, Jones and Pittman, 1982 and Leary, 1995). Social anxiety involves worry regarding social evaluation; therefore, it can be conceptualized as a perceived self-presentational problem (Leary and Buckley, 2000 and Schlenker and Leary, 1982). As such, it is triggered when individuals are motivated to convey a particular impression – usually one that will facilitate interpersonal acceptance (or perhaps more accurately, to avoid interpersonal rejection) but doubt their ability to do so. Individuals who are highly motivated to avoid rejection and secure acceptance are predisposed to social anxiety. More formally, a self-presentational perspective (Leary, 1983 and Leary and Kowalski, 1995) suggests that social anxiety (SA) is characterized by two components: impression motivation (IM) and perceived probability of self-presentational success (or impression efficacy, IE), as reflected in the following model: SA=IM×(1-IE)SA=IM×(1-IE) Turn MathJax on Impression motivation (IM) is the degree to which a person desires to make specific impressions. According to self-presentation theory, social anxiety occurs when an individual feels that the consequences of self-presentations are important. To the degree an individual cares about a social presentation, he or she is likely to experience social anxiety. Previous research has found evidence of an association between impression motivation and social anxiety (e.g., DePaulo et al., 1990 and Reno and Kenny, 1992). For example, Reno and Kenny (1992) examined the relationship between social anxiety and propensity to self-disclose. Participants were asked to participate in a discussion in which they evaluated their own amount of self-disclosure and were also rated by other participants in a group. Highly anxious individuals were more concerned than less anxious individuals about the impression they were making on group members and also tried to control this impression. Because socially anxious individuals were concerned about the impressions they were making, these results are consistent with the idea that socially anxious people are motivated to manage the impression they make on others. Impression efficacy (IE), the cognitive self-presentational component of social anxiety, is one’s estimation of the subjective probability of actually making a desired impression. According to self-presentation theory, social anxiety occurs when people believe that they are not able to present themselves in a particular way. To the degree that people perceive themselves as lacking such efficacy, they are likely to experience social anxiety. Indeed, several studies have supported the proposed link between social anxiety and impression efficacy or self-perceived interpersonal ability (e.g., Leary, Atherton, Hill, & Hur, 1986). For instance, Maddux, Norton, and Leary (1988) used a “hypothetical social situation” procedure in which participants read (and listened to) brief descriptions of social situations and reported the presentational efficacy and social anxiety that they would likely experience in each situation. Each situation reflected an encounter that focused on an interpersonal problem and a way in which a social goal could be achieved. As expected, results revealed that high levels of social anxiety were associated with low self-presentational efficacy. That is, participants who anticipated an inability to handle the social situations were likely to anticipate high social anxiety. 1.2. Contextualized and dispositional effects in the self-presentation model of social anxiety In principle, the self-presentation model of social anxiety might be applied from either a contextualized perspective or a dispositional perspective. From a contextualized or within-person perspective, a momentary experience of social anxiety might arise from a momentary state of motivation to create specific impressions and/or a momentary state of poor impression efficacy. From a dispositional or between-person perspective, stable individual differences in the tendency to experience social anxiety (across contexts) might be associated with stable individual differences in the tendencies to be motivated to be seen in particular ways and to experience a lack of efficacy in doing so. Despite the potential applicability of the self-presentation model from the contextualized and dispositional perspectives, previous research generally focuses on only one perspective at a time. Further, to our knowledge, previous research has never examined the two factors (impression motivation and impression efficacy) simultaneously as predictors of social anxiety, much less in a way that operationalizes them in a comparable way. The current research seeks to address this gap in the literature by providing evidence that impression motivation and impression efficacy indeed both operate as independent predictors of social anxiety. For example, the research by Maddux et al. (1988) focused on the effect of presentational efficacy on social anxiety using a between-person perspective. Although the “hypothetical social situation” procedure used by Maddux and his colleagues provided situation-by-situation information (i.e., affording a within-person-oriented analysis), their primary research questions were focused on individual differences. Thus, Maddux et al. aggregated participants’ responses across situations, focusing on the between-person level of analysis rather than the within-person level. Therefore, the research provided important information about only one level of analysis. More generally, the literature has not systematically compared contextualized and dispositional manifestations of social anxiety in general nor the self-presentation model in particular. A systematic examination of the self-presentation model of social anxiety from both contextualized and dispositional perspectives has important theoretical implications. First, it provides insight into social anxiety as primarily contextual or primarily dispositional in nature. That is, it allows us to compare variability in social anxiety across two important psychosocial levels – either as a phenomenon that ebbs and flows dramatically across situations (for most people) or as a phenomenon that differs dramatically between people (regardless of contextual forces). Most, if not all, people might experience social anxiety in some situations but not in others, suggesting that social anxiety is heavily affected by contextual factors. However, there also seems to be dramatic differences between people, in terms of their tendency to experience social anxiety, and this suggests that social anxiety might heavily reflect dispositional factors. To our knowledge, only one study has provided relevant evidence regarding this comparison. Nezlek and Leary (2002) examined participants’ daily-life experience of several important social variables, including the degree of nervousness or tension that was experienced in social interactions. Results showed that 76% of the variance in daily life experiences of social anxiety arose from the ebb and flow of social anxiety that people experienced from one situation to another, whereas 24% seemed to be related to differences in people’s general tendency to experience social anxiety (see Nezlek & Leary, 2002, Table 2). Such results suggest that social anxiety might have a larger contextual component than a dispositional component. To our knowledge, this important finding has not been replicated, and thus its generalizability and validity is unknown. More broadly, recent research indicates that within-person variability can differ substantially from between-person variability for some important psychological characteristics (Fleeson, 2001 and Fleeson, 2007b). To more fully understand social anxiety as a psychological characteristic, we must understand the degree to which it varies from person to person and from situation to situation in common daily experiences. Table 2. Contextual and dispositional effects for Studies 1, 2, and 3. Main effects models Interactive models Study Int IM IE Int IM IE IM × IE Contextual effects γ00 γ10 γ20 γ00 γ10 γ20 γ30 1 2.86 .59⁎⁎⁎ −.87⁎⁎⁎ 2.87 .57⁎⁎⁎ −.88⁎⁎⁎ .13⁎ 2 2.98 .61⁎⁎⁎ −.67⁎⁎⁎ 2.99 .60⁎⁎⁎ −.68⁎⁎⁎ −.09⁎⁎⁎ 3 1.95 .49⁎⁎⁎ −.51⁎⁎⁎ 1.96 .49⁎⁎⁎ −.50⁎⁎⁎ −.11⁎⁎ Dispositional effects γ00 γ01 γ02 γ00 γ01 γ02 γ03 1 2.87 .45⁎⁎⁎ −.57⁎⁎⁎ 2.87 .45⁎⁎⁎ −.53⁎⁎⁎ −.37⁎ 2 2.99 .51⁎⁎⁎ −.70⁎⁎⁎ 3.04 .52⁎⁎⁎ −.66⁎⁎⁎ −.34⁎ 3 1.97 .33⁎⁎⁎ −.37⁎⁎⁎ 1.99 .35⁎⁎⁎ −.51⁎⁎⁎ −.33⁎⁎ Note. Int = Intercept, IM = Impression motivation, IE = Impression efficacy. ⁎ p < .05. ⁎⁎ p < .01. ⁎⁎⁎ p < .001. Table options The multi-level examination of the self-presentation model of social anxiety is important also because the model might apply at only one psychosocial level. That is, a systematic, multi-level examination would reveal any differential applicability of the theory to the two levels of the phenomenon, revealing whether the causal mechanisms operating at one level of social anxiety operate to the same degree (if at all) at the other. Indeed, the processes generating an individual’s situation-to-situation experience of a psychological phenomenon such as social anxiety might differ from the processes generating reliable differences among individuals’ general level of social anxiety (Fleeson, 2007a and Furr and Huelsman, 2003). For example, the motivational and cognitive mechanisms (impression motivation, impression efficacy) within the self-presentation model might more strongly determine individuals’ situation-to-situation experience of social anxiety than individuals’ dispositional experience of social anxiety. The use of multilevel modeling in our analyses will allow us formally to disentangle these effects (Nezlek, 2001). Examining such possibilities would expand the general understanding of the fundamental causal mechanisms that contribute to within-person differences and between-person differences in social anxiety. A third important feature of the systematic, multilevel examination of the model is that it reflects a method that facilitates a more general integration of social and personality psychology. Traditionally, social psychology has focused on contextualized effects, whereas personality psychology has traditionally focused on stable decontextualized individual differences. These traditions have been changing as more integrative views arise (Fleeson, 2001, Funder and Fast, 2010 and Furr, 2009a; Mischel & Shoda, 1995; Swann & Seyle, 2005). Despite these changes, there are relatively few systematically-integrated examinations of contextual and dispositional perspectives on a single model as examined within a single data set. That is, few studies use a single data set to examine a given hypothesis (or model) from both levels of analysis. The integrated approach adopted in the current studies provides better leverage on the differences, similarities, and convergences between contextual perspectives and dispositional perspectives than do approaches that examine the perspectives in different ways and based upon different data sets. In sum, the current multi-level studies reflect an approach that maximally integrates social and personality perspectives. 1.3. The interactive association between impression motivation and impression efficacy on social anxiety Although there is empirical support for impression motivation and impression efficacy as separate constructs in the experience of social anxiety, to our knowledge, there have been no investigations of the interactive nature of the model as originally proposed. Note that the model proposed by Leary and Kowalski (1995) is multiplicative, suggesting an interactive association between impression motivation and impression efficacy on social anxiety. That is, the model suggests that the association between social anxiety and impression motivation depends on impression efficacy. Fig. 1 presents one reasonable reflection of this association as specified by the multiplicative model. In this figure, impression motivation affects social anxiety only when impression efficacy is low; conversely, impression motivation does not affect social anxiety when impression efficacy is high. One interpretation of such a pattern is that impression efficacy buffers against the effects of impression motivation on social anxiety (or vice versa). That is, high motivation elicits social anxiety but only (or most strongly) when an individual feels a lack of efficacy. Thus far, no evidence has been provided to evaluate the proposed interactive association between impression motivation and impression efficacy. A potential interactive association, as predicted by the self-presentation ... Fig. 1. A potential interactive association, as predicted by the self-presentation theory of social anxiety. Figure options This paper tests this proposed interactive effect, providing a deeper understanding of how motivational and cognitive processes affect social anxiety. Currently, evidence suggests that impression motivation and impression efficacy operate only in a summative manner, but the possibility exists that these variables work together to produce effects greater than the sum of their parts. This issue is important to examine because it provides insight into the precise form of the self-presentation model of social anxiety, into the extent to which the theory can explain differences in social anxiety, and into social anxiety more broadly. Testing the interactive effects of impression motivation and impression efficacy is also important considering modern conceptualizations of personality. For instance, according to the Cognitive Affective Personality System approach, personality may be defined in part by whether and how beliefs and expectancies (e.g. impression motivation, impression efficacy) about a particular situation may influence or interact with one another (Mischel & Shoda, 1995). We hypothesize that the interactive association will be similar to that illustrated in Fig. 1. In the regression-based analyses to follow, this type of interactive association would be reflected in a negative interaction term, indicating that the relatively high levels of impression efficacy are associated with a relatively weak link between impression motivation and social anxiety. 1.4. Summary and overview The current studies were conducted to examine two issues: the degree to which the self-presentation model of social anxiety applies at both a within-person and between-person level of analysis, examining impression motivation and impression efficacy simultaneously as predictors, and the degree to which impression motivation and impression efficacy interactively predict social anxiety. The first pair of studies adopted the “hypothetical social situations” procedure used by Maddux et al. (1988), examining participants’ responses across a variety of situations that would not be uncommon in students’ everyday lives. Participants read and responded to 11 social situations and to 30 social situations in Study 1 and Study 2, respectively. Because these studies share a common design, they will be presented together. Study 3 implemented an experience sampling procedure (Bolger et al., 2003 and Hektner et al., 2007) in which participants recorded their experiences within actual social interactions for 7 days. These studies were intended to reflect the potential experiences of social anxiety in the common day-to-day experiences of our participants, and they represent designs with complementary strengths in terms of providing insight into participants’ actual psychological responses (Furr, 2009b).

5. Conclusion The current studies reveal information about two main issues, using complementary types of methodology—the use of hypothetical scenarios and experience-sampling. First, these studies consistently support the applicability of the theory, in which impression motivation and impression efficacy are featured as independent determinants of social anxiety, at two levels of analyses: the situation and the person. Second, these studies revealed the presence of an interaction between impression motivation and impression efficacy on social anxiety, as aspect of the self-presentation theory of social anxiety that is formally implied by the model but previously untested. The current paper expands and elaborates understanding of the social psychological foundations of social anxiety.