Abstract
Background
Social anxiety is associated with increased and decreased alcohol use. Alcohol expectancies may help explain these inconsistencies. For example, a fear of losing control in front of others could motivate avoidance of alcohol. Similarly, cognitive models propose that individuals with elevated social anxiety believe they are at risk of behaving inappropriately and embarrassing themselves, indicating that beliefs about losing control over one’s behaviour may be involved in social anxiety. This experiment aimed to manipulate negative alcohol expectancies about losing control to assess their impact on symptoms and processes associated with social anxiety.
Methods
Ninety-three undergraduate participants (i.e., non-clinical sample) were randomly assigned to an alcohol, placebo, or control condition and were ‘informed’ that alcohol makes people lose control over their actions/speech. They then completed a ‘getting to know you’ task.
Results
Participants in the placebo and alcohol (versus control) conditions experienced greater anxiety before and during the task and engaged in more post-event processing 24 h later. However, the physiological effects of alcohol influenced results: participants in the alcohol (versus placebo) condition experienced lower anticipatory anxiety, perceived themselves as making a better first impression, and demonstrated a lower reliance on safety behaviour.
Conclusions
Although this experiment used a non-clinical sample, beliefs about losing control may be important to consider when conceptualizing social anxiety and treating associated symptoms from a cognitive-behavioural framework.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Notes
In support of this suggestion, a paired samples t-test showed that participants in the control condition experienced a significant increase in anxiety when comparing their scores of anticipatory anxiety (M = 14.87, SD = 20.81) and anxiety during the ‘getting to know you’ task (M = 25.16, SD = 19.04), t(30) = -3.37, p = 002.
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Acknowledgements
The first author is grateful for having received a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and a Doctoral Training Scholarship from the Fonds de recherche du Québec—Santé. The authors would also like to thank Alissa Singerman and Madeline Q. Morris for their help with data collection, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.
Funding
This study was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant Number 435-2017-0922).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by JPG. The first draft of the manuscript was written by JPG and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript. JPG: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing Original draft, Visualization, Project administration. ASR: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing Review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. RMO: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing Review & editing, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition.
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Jean-Philippe Gagné, Adam S. Radomsky, and Roisin M. O’Connor have no conflict of interest.
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Gagné, JP., Radomsky, A.S. & O’Connor, R.M. Manipulating Alcohol Expectancies in Social Anxiety: A Focus on Beliefs About Losing Control. Cogn Ther Res 45, 61–73 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-020-10165-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-020-10165-6