A recent study, published in PLOS ONE, suggests that mental imagery plays a role in maintaining social anxiety in adolescents. When socially anxious youth held a negative (vs. benign) image in mind during a conversation, they rated themselves more negatively and were given more critical ratings by their conversation partners.
Previous studies have shown that negative self-imagery can promote the maintenance of social anxiety in adults by increasing anxiety and leading to the use of counterproductive behaviors. As these effects have yet to be confirmed in adolescents, researchers Leigh, Chiu, and Clark, wanted to explore this phenomenon in a younger population.
Researchers recruited 34 students who scored in the top quartile for their year group on the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale for Children and Adolescents. The subjects, who were between the ages of 11-14, took part in an experimental study that had them conjure up a particular mental image and hold it in mind while having a conversation with a stranger. Participants took part in two different conditions. In the negative image condition, participants were prompted to recall a social situation in which they remembered feeling anxious. In the benign image condition, subjects were asked to recall a social situation in which they had felt relaxed.
Results showed that subjects in the negative image condition rated themselves as both feeling and appearing more anxious than did those in the benign condition. Additionally, it seemed that the negative self-imagery also had an observable effect on the adolescents’ behavior. The conversation partners, who were psychology students unaware of the aims of the study, also rated participants in the negative image condition as more anxious than those in the benign image condition. Furthermore, independent raters who watched a video of the interactions rated the conversations of those in the negative image condition as less “reciprocal, interesting and enjoyable.”
Prompted by previous findings from adult samples, researchers wondered whether the use of safety behaviors might explain this effect. Mediation analysis did find that the use of avoidant safety behaviors significantly explained the relationship between negative imagery and ratings of conversation quality by observers. “Safety behaviours”, the researchers explain, “are intended to prevent or minimise a feared outcome from occurring, and may involve avoidance (e.g. avoiding eye contact, speaking less).”
As the authors illustrate, “a socially anxious adolescent who stands on the edge of the group, avoiding eye contact and declining to ask any questions for fear of stumbling over their words and appearing stupid, will be perceived more critically by others.”
“This is a sad irony,” they add, “because this is the opposite message that they are trying to communicate.”
The researchers share that, due to their small sample size, the results of the mediation analysis might be exaggerated. Still, they maintain that their study provides evidence that negative mental imagery has a harmful effect on adolescents with social anxiety, just as it does for adults. They address the implications for adolescent therapy, suggesting that clinical interventions use video feedback to address and revise distorted mental images.
The study, “The effects of modifying mental imagery in adolescent social anxiety”, was authored by Eleanor Leigh, Kenny Chiu, and David M. Clark.