Social anxiety in online social interactions: Examining the effects of self and audience images on anxiety, self-awareness and performance evaluations.

BACKGROUND

Few studies have examined social anxiety symptoms during online social interactions. We examined self-report symptoms in individuals with elevated social anxiety in online interactions in the presence/absence of virtual audience images and the presence/absence of live videos of the self.

METHOD: Participants with elevated social anxiety who were not treatment-seeking gave a short impromptu talk via an online social communication platform. Participants were randomised to present with their camera on or off, and to audience images that were visible or not. We recorded participants' self-reported anxiety, perspective taken, evaluations of speech performance, and post-event processing.

RESULTS

Anxiety increased during the online social interaction. Furthermore, participants whose camera was on, but the audience was not visible, evaluated their own performance as worse and engaged in more severe negative post-event processing compared with the other conditions.

DISCUSSION: Online videoconferencing tasks can induce anxiety and activate negative self-images and post-event evaluations of social performance. Our findings support the use of online social interactions to research social anxiety, maladaptive cognitive-behavioural biases and to develop novel interventions.