Exploring the latent structure of two cognitive components of social anxiety: taxometric analyses of fears of negative and positive evaluation.

BACKGROUND

Recent evidence suggests that social anxiety disorder is best characterized as having a dimensional latent structure.

METHODS

In this study, we examined the latent structure of two cognitive components of social anxiety, fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and fear of positive evaluation (FPE), in a large undergraduate sample. Two taxometric procedures (MAMBAC, Mean Above Minus Below a Cut and MAXEIG, MAXimum EIGenvalue) were performed with indicator sets drawn from self-report measures of FNE and FPE.

RESULTS AND

CONCLUSIONS

Taxometric analyses, as well as comparison analyses utilizing simulated dimensional and taxonic datasets, yielded converging evidence that both FNE and FPE have a dimensional latent structure.