In search of social phobia subtypes: similarity of feared social situations.

The existence of subtypes of social phobia has been questioned. Although cluster analytic methods have been used to support various subtype models, a continuous model based on total number of feared social situations seems equally plausible. In a community sample, we calculated mean similarity measures for combinations of item pairs of feared social situations. Speaking fear items were significantly more similar to each other than to other items. There was also a trend for interaction fear items to be more similar to each other than to other items. These findings suggest that fear of speaking and interactional situations may represent distinct domains of socially feared situations. They should be considered separately in delineation of treatment response and may, if replicated in clinical samples, help identify meaningful subtypes of social phobia.