A quantitative estimate of schema abnormality in socially anxious and non-anxious individuals.
Although cognitive theories of anxiety suggest that anxious individuals are characterized by abnormal threat-relevant schemas, few empirical studies have estimated the nature of these cognitive structures using quantitative methods that lend themselves to inferential statistical analysis. In the present study, socially anxious (n = 55) and non-anxious (n = 62) participants completed 3 Q-Sort tasks to assess their knowledge of events that commonly occur in social or evaluative scenarios. Participants either sorted events according to how commonly they personally believe the events occur (i.e. "self" condition), or to how commonly they estimate that most people believe they occur (i.e. "other" condition). Participants' individual Q-Sorts were correlated with mean sorts obtained from a normative sample to obtain an estimate of schema abnormality, with lower correlations representing greater levels of abnormality. Relative to non-anxious participants, socially anxious participants' sorts were less strongly associated with sorts of the normative sample, particularly in the "self" condition, although secondary analyses suggest that some significant results might be explained, in part, by depression and experience with the scenarios. These results provide empirical support for the theoretical notion that threat-relevant self-schemas of anxious individuals are characterized by some degree of abnormality.
Wenzel
Amy
A
Psychopathology Research Unit, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19104, USA. awenzel@mail.med.upenn.edu
Brendle
Jennifer R
JR
Kerr
Patrick L
PL
Purath
Donna
D
Ferraro
F Richard
FR
D000328:Adult; D001143:Arousal; D001288:Attention; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D018187:Personal Construct Theory; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D011594:Psychometrics; D011779:Q-Sort / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012016:Reference Values; D012649:Self Concept; D012938:Social Perception; D013223:Statistics as Topic