Anxiety Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Anxiety, including details on anxiety disorder, panic attacks, medication, counselling, therapy.

The effect of the decreased safety behaviors on anxiety and negative thoughts in social phobics.

Kim EJ

Department of Psychology, Ajou University, San 5, Wonchun-dong, Paldal-gu, Suwon 442-749, South Korea. kej@ajou.ac.kr

In order to examine the effect of the decreased safety behaviors on social anxiety and negative thoughts and explore the mechanism underlying this effect, this study compared three types of exposure namely, exposure with decreased safety behaviors under cognitive rationale, exposure with decreased safety behaviors under extinction rationale, and exposure with no change in safety behavior. Forty-five social phobics were randomly assigned to one of three exposure groups. Results showed that exposure with decreased safety behaviors under cognitive rationale produced significantly greater reductions in anxiety and belief ratings for feared outcomes than exposure with decreased safety behaviors under extinction rationale and exposure with no change in safety behaviors. These results imply that exposure could be more effective if social phobics are encouraged to drop their safety behaviors in the feared social situation, and that the cognitive process of disconfirmation of negative thoughts is the critical element in determining effectiveness of decreased safety behaviors.

Published 18 October 2004 in J Anxiety Disord, 19(1): 69-86.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

© 2004-2008 Anxiety Research Today. All Rights Reserved.