DETECTION OF NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE AUDIENCE BEHAVIORS BY SOCIALLY ANXIOUS SUBJECTS

Nineteen subjects high in social anxiety and 20 subjects low in social anxiety were asked to give a 5-min speech in front of three audience members. Audience members were trained to provide indictators of posit ive evaluation (e.g. smiles) and negative evaluation (e.g. frowns) at irregular intervals during the speech. Subjects were instructed to ind icate, by depressing one of two buttons, when they detected either pos itive or negative behaviours. Results indicated that subjects high in social anxiety were both more accurate at, and had a more liberal crit erion for, detecting negative audience behaviours while subjects low i n social anxiety were more accurate at detecting positive audience beh aviours. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.