Private self-consciousness and fear of negative evaluation.

We examined the loci of social anxiety in a sample of 385 Australian adult subjects (186 men and 199 women, mean age 30.63 years). Responses to the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale, the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (Watson & Friend, 1969), and the Public and Private Self-Consciousness Scale (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975) were intercorrelated. The results suggested that for some socially anxious people who are privately shy, the locus of their anxiety is cognitive, whereas for others who are more concerned with performance, the locus is behavioral.