Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada.
Anxiety Stress Coping. 2021 Mar;34(2):215-227. doi: 10.1080/10615806.2020.1839729. Epub 2020 Oct 30.
Socially anxious individuals often exhibit signs of anxiety that might elicit discomfort in others and negatively influence their interactions, due in part to emotional contagion. However, there is limited research examining the phenomenon of emotional contagion in social anxiety, which is the topic of the current study.
An experimental design was used in which undergraduate psychology students ( = 128) were assigned to either an experimental condition (watching a video of a socially anxious presenter) or a control condition (watching a video of a nonanxious presenter). Various measures were administered to assess social anxiety, emotional contagion, state anxiety, and related constructs.
After controlling for baseline anxiety levels, participants in the experimental condition reported significantly higher levels of anxiety during and immediately after watching the video compared to individuals in the control condition (multivariate analysis of covariance, analysis of variance). Similar results were found across both conditions in participants with higher levels of trait social anxiety and higher public speaking anxiety (moderated regression analyses).
The findings suggest that social anxiety may be emotionally contagious, and provides insight into the role that emotional contagion may play in the association between social anxiety and interpersonal functioning.
社交焦虑个体常表现出焦虑迹象，这可能会引起他人不适，并对其互动产生负面影响，部分原因是情绪感染。然而，目前关于社交焦虑情绪感染现象的研究有限，本研究旨在探讨这一现象。
本研究采用实验设计，将心理学专业的大学生（n=128）分配到实验组（观看一位社交焦虑演讲者的视频）或对照组（观看一位不焦虑演讲者的视频）。通过各种措施评估社交焦虑、情绪感染、状态焦虑和相关构念。
在控制基线焦虑水平后，实验组参与者在观看视频期间和之后报告的焦虑水平显著高于对照组（协方差多变量分析、方差分析）。在具有较高特质社交焦虑和较高公众演讲焦虑的参与者中，两种条件下均发现了相似的结果（调节回归分析）。
研究结果表明社交焦虑可能具有情绪感染力，并深入了解情绪感染在社交焦虑与人际功能之间的关联中可能发挥的作用。
