Social Anxiety And Conformity

Social anxiety is partially defined by the fear of social pressures, as well as the very essence of the act of conformity. Conformity shows compliance with what is socially acceptable. In order to avoid being judged by others, people comply to what is deemed as socially acceptable; those with social anxiety tend to act upon this out of intense fear (Chapman, 2006, para. 17). Due to the limited research on the relationship of social anxiety and conformity, in particular, research on each specific topic has been explored and the current research is a venture to find a relationship between the two. Although social anxiety and conformity and two completely different entities, they have essential similarities that suggest a relationship (Zhang

If people agree with the group, they feel safe, protected, and accepted; they receive positive feedback. On the contrary, what does it look like if people receive negative feedback from others? Researchers, Chandra Bautista and Debra Hope (2015), conducted a study based on the fear of negative evaluation and the positive and negative signs of social cues. Forty undergraduate students, with pre-existing levels of social anxiety, participated in a series of social interactions and received varying levels of positive and negative feedback. They found that those with higher levels of social anxiety encountered more self-focused and negative thoughts compared to those with lower levels of social anxiety. The researchers analyzed that participants exhibited a dysfunctional bias when they received their social feedback. Socially anxious individuals tended to attribute the positive feedback to others (the confederates) and not their own social performance. This may be attributed to not feeling as though they were not fully apart of the group, in other words, being singled out. The participants who were highly socially anxious did not have their underlying need met to be apart of the

Participants will complete a Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale so the researchers can receive a baseline of the participants level of social anxiety. Next, participants will complete an individual questionnaire of moral dilemmas with multiple choice answers. Then, the participants will discuss similar moral dilemma questions from a group questionnaire; there will be one repeating, target question from the individual questionnaire. The experimental group will be subjected to various stressors. We present between-subjects comparisons that will examine the differences between control and experimental groups due to the later experiencing