Department of Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Sports Science, University of Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany.
Depress Anxiety. 2010 Dec;27(12):1128-34. doi: 10.1002/da.20746.
Social anxiety is assumed to be related to cultural norms across countries. Heinrichs et al. [2006: Behav Res Ther 44:1187-1197] compared individualistic and collectivistic countries and found higher social anxiety and more positive attitudes toward socially avoidant behaviors in collectivistic rather than in individualistic countries. However, the authors failed to include Latin American countries in the collectivistic group.
To provide support for these earlier results within an extended sample of collectivistic countries, 478 undergraduate students from individualistic countries were compared with 388 undergraduate students from collectivistic countries (including East Asian and Latin American) via self-report of social anxiety and social vignettes assessing social norms.
As expected, the results of Heinrichs et al. [2006: Behav Res Ther 44:1187-1197] were replicated for the individualistic and Asian countries, but not for Latin American countries. Latin American countries displayed the lowest social anxiety levels, whereas the collectivistic East Asian group displayed the highest.
These findings indicate that while culture-mediated social norms affect social anxiety and might help to shed light on the etiology of social anxiety disorder, the dimension of individualism-collectivism may not fully capture the relevant norms.
社会焦虑被认为与不同国家的文化规范有关。Heinrichs 等人[2006：行为研究与治疗 44:1187-1197]比较了个人主义和集体主义国家，发现集体主义国家的社会焦虑程度更高，对回避社交行为的态度更为积极。然而，作者没有将拉丁美洲国家纳入集体主义群体。
为了在一个扩展的集体主义国家样本中为这些早期结果提供支持，通过自我报告的社交焦虑和评估社会规范的社交情景模拟，比较了来自个人主义国家的 478 名本科生和来自集体主义国家（包括东亚和拉丁美洲）的 388 名本科生。
正如预期的那样，Heinrichs 等人[2006：行为研究与治疗 44:1187-1197]的结果在个人主义和亚洲国家得到了复制，但在拉丁美洲国家没有得到复制。拉丁美洲国家的社交焦虑水平最低，而集体主义的东亚群体则最高。
这些发现表明，虽然文化介导的社会规范会影响社交焦虑，并有助于揭示社交焦虑症的病因，但个人主义-集体主义的维度可能无法完全捕捉到相关规范。
