I'm Still Standing: Body Sway, Interpersonal Distance, and Social Anxiety - A Proof of Principle

Cognitive models suggest that individuals with high degrees of social anxiety (SAs) tend to incorrectly interpret (ambiguous) social cues as negative evaluations and thus justifying their fears. It is assumed that subtle behaviors of SAs may give rise to factual negative evaluations, but it is unclear which kind of behaviors that may be. We tested whether automatic motivational behavior becomes disrupted when degree of social anxiety increases, expecting higher social anxiety to be associated with more threat-related 'freezing' (reduction of body sway) and backward leaning (avoidance).

Of 87 participants with varying degrees of social anxiety, body sway was recorded by means of a stabilometric platform, while a fe-/male experimenter was gradually approaching.

Higher levels of social anxiety were related to an increase of body sway at an interpersonal distance of 260 to 120cm. No avoidant backward-leaning occurred.

Predictability of set-up and knowledge of escape options may have undermined participants' experience of the situation as highly socially threatening. Unease-, rather than fear-related behavior may have been the result.

The results indicate that SAs seem to show an increase in uneasy, nervous movement when approached by strangers. Whether that provokes the negative evaluation SAs fear most, still needs to be investigated.