Question

Assess what characteristics might make an individual more at risk for developing SAD?

Answer 1

Characteristics that might make an individual more at risk for develop Social Anxiety disorder:

1. Perceptions of uncontrollability and unpredictability: Being exposed to uncontrollable and unpredictable stressful events (such as parental separation and divorce, family conflict, or sexual abuse) may play an important role in the development of SAD. People with SAD have a diminished sense of personal control over events in their lives. This diminished expectation of personal control may develop, at least in part, as a function of having been raised in families with somewhat overprotective and sometimes rejecting parents.

2. Cognitive biases: Cognitive factors also play a role in the onset and maintenance of social phobia. Beck and Emery (1985) suggested that people with social phobia tend to expect that other people will reject or negatively evaluate them. They argued that this leads to a sense of vulnerability when they are around people who might pose a threat. Another cognitive bias seen in social phobia is a tendency to interpret ambiguous social information in a negative rather than a benign manner (e.g.., when someone smiles at you, does it mean they like you or that they think you’re foolish?). Moreover, it is the negatively biased interpretations that socially anxious people make that are what is remembered