A comparison of emotional processing and fear of positive/negative evaluations in women with social phobia and normal women

The aim of this study was to compare emotional processing and fear of positive-negative evaluations in the women with social phobia and normal women. The type of study was causal-comparative. The research sample consisted of 60 women with social phobia and 60 normal women which were selected through stage cluster random sampling among women of Gorgan. To collect the data, Social Phobia Scale (Conner ,et al., 2000), Emotional Processing Scale (Bakeret et al., 2007), Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (Weeks et al., 2008) and Fear of Positive Evaluation Scale (Leary,1983) were used. The results of multivariate analysis of variance indicated that women with social phobia have greater emotional processing and fear of negative evaluation and also lower fear of positive evaluation than healthy women. (P<0.001). The results of multiple regressions showed that the emotional processing and fear of negative-positive evaluations explain 57% of variance of social phobia in women with this phobia (P<0.001). The findings have important implications concerning prevention, therapy and services of counseling for women with social phobia.