Effects of varying levels of anxiety within social situations: relationship to memory perspective and attributions in social phobia

Cognitive-behavioral theorists (Clark & Wells, 1995. Clark, D. M. & Wells, A. (1995). A cognitive model of social phobia. In R. G. Heimberg, M, R. Lie bowitz, D. A. Hope, & F. R. Schneier (Eds.), Social phobia: Diagnosis, asse ssment. and treatment (pp. 69-93). New York: Guilford Press; Rapee & Heimbe rg, 1997: Rapee, R. M., & Heimberg, R. G. (1997). A cognitive-behavioral mo del of anxiety in social phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 35, 741-75 6.) propose that individuals with social phobia form mental images of thems elves as if from an external point of view. Research by Wells and colleague s has shown that, when recalling anxiety-provoking social situations, indiv iduals with social phobia are more likely to take an observer perspective ( seeing oneself as if from an external point of view) whereas control subjec ts are more likely to take a field perspective las if looking out through o ne's own eyes). Furthermore, this pattern is specific to social events, as both groups recall non-social events from a field perspective (see Wells, C lark & Ahmad, 1998: Wells, A., Clark, D. M., & Ahmad, S. (1998). How do I l ook with my minds eye: perspective taking in social phobic imagery. Behavio ur Research and Therapy, 36, 631-634; Wells & Papageorigou, 1999: Wells, A. & Papageorgiou, C. (1999). The observer perspective: Biased imagery in soc ial phobia, agoraphobia, and blood/injury phobia. Behaviour Research ann Th erapy, 37, 653-658). In the current study, individuals with social phobia t ook more of an observer perspective than non-anxious controls when recallin g high anxiety social situations. However, both groups took a predominantly field perspective for memories of medium or low anxiety social situations. As memory perspective has also been shown to be related to causal attribut ions, we examined this relationship in our sample. Memories of low, medium, and high anxiety social situations were differentially related to attribut ions for each group. Patients' attributions for their performance became mo re internal, stable, and global as the anxiety level of the situation incre ased, while the attributions of control subjects showed the opposite patter n. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.