Anticipation of Social Interaction Changes Implicit Approach-Avoidance Behavior of Socially Anxious Individuals.

"A second, contrasting and more speculative interpretation of the approach tendency of the high SAs when anticipating social interaction would be that this reflects their implicit eagerness to have contact with others. It may be that only under circumstances in which they are confronted with an unavoidable social interaction, as in the anticipation condition, their wish to make contact with others becomes apparent. The diagnosis of SAD implicitly assumes that, in contrast to, e.g., schizoid personality disorder, their desire for social interaction is still intact. Taking into consideration that SAD patients report severe problems in developing satisfying relations (see Alden and Taylor , , for reviews) they may well have an increased implicit wish to make contact with others. Indeed, Davila and Beck () showed that SAs have a dependent interpersonal style in close relationships, suggesting that they rely excessively on close others to compensate for their problems in social contact. Moreover, in the study by Kashdan and Wenzel (), dyads of high and low SAs participated in conversations of 45 min of personal disclosure. Afterwards, the SAs dyads appreciated these social interactions more than the low SAs or mixed high and low SAs dyads. The authors interpreted this finding to suggest that, due to their avoidance, social activities are rare, but highly desirable for high SAs. It may be that such a deprivation from social interactions results in an eagerness to have satisfying interactions with others. This eagerness for social interactions may then become apparent at an implicit level when the high SAs are confronted with an upcoming, unavoidable social interaction, as in our study. Of course, this interpretation is speculative and needs more study."

"Dr. Anne Roefs is thanked for her contributions to the set-up of this study. Anneke van de Gevel, Truus Custers and Annie Raven are thanked for conducting the study. In addition, we are grateful to the Behavioural Science Institute of Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, for financial support and facilities, to Frank Leonardt for programming the AAT, and to the reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier version of the article."