A Social Identity Approach to Social Anxiety
type: CreativeWork
description: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common and disabling condition, with prevalence rates increasing since the COVID-19 pandemic. SAD is defined as a fear of negative evaluation, causing psychological distress and impairment as well as significant economic costs. There are a number of evidence-based therapies available for SAD, with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) recommended as the condition's frontline treatment. As such, the development and maintenance of social anxiety symptoms have been largely conceptualised through a cognitive behavioural lens. Yet, remission rates for CBT for SAD are lower than those of other anxiety disorders, and researchers have cited a need for alternative conceptualisations of the condition. In particular, there is a lack of theoretical work, and associated empirical evidence, outlining the role of social processes in social anxiety and how these interact with individualistic, cognitive behavioural processes. This thesis offers a social psychological analysis of social anxiety, using the social identity approach, and integrates this with current cognitive behavioural theorising. The social identity approach argues that people's group memberships, when internalised into their sense of self, form social identities. Social identities provide the individual with psychological resources like a sense of meaning, self-esteem, and social support, which, in turn, support health and well-being. In particular, having multiple social identities (termed multiple group memberships) has been found to be particularly beneficial. In this thesis I extend current social identity theorising and develop a novel social identity model of social anxiety (SIMSA) and test several of its propositions across three empirical studies. First, I demonstrate that those who maintained multiple group memberships over the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (February to August 2020) had lower anxiety in anticipation of future feared social situations (August 2020) a…
abstract: Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common and disabling condition, with prevalence rates increasing since the COVID-19 pandemic. SAD is defined as a fear of negative evaluation, causing psychological distress and impairment as well as significant economic costs. There are a number of evidence-based therapies available for SAD, with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) recommended as the condition's frontline treatment. As such, the development and maintenance of social anxiety symptoms have been largely conceptualised through a cognitive behavioural lens. Yet, remission rates for CBT for SAD are lower than those of other anxiety disorders, and researchers have cited a need for alternative conceptualisations of the condition. In particular, there is a lack of theoretical work, and associated empirical evidence, outlining the role of social processes in social anxiety and how these interact with individualistic, cognitive behavioural processes. This thesis offers a social psychological analysis of social anxiety, using the social identity approach, and integrates this with current cognitive behavioural theorising. The social identity approach argues that people's group memberships, when internalised into their sense of self, form social identities. Social identities provide the individual with psychological resources like a sense of meaning, self-esteem, and social support, which, in turn, support health and well-being. In particular, having multiple social identities (termed multiple group memberships) has been found to be particularly beneficial. In this thesis I extend current social identity theorising and develop a novel social identity model of social anxiety (SIMSA) and test several of its propositions across three empirical studies. First, I demonstrate that those who maintained multiple group memberships over the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (February to August 2020) had lower anxiety in anticipation of future feared social situations (August 2020) a…
author: Donaldson, Jessica
language: en_AU
date published: 2025
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:55:07Z
provider: Australian National University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Australian National University

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: https://hdl.handle.net/1885/733728436