An empirical analysis of Moscovitch’s reconceptualised model of social anxiety: How is it different from fear of negative evaluation?

• We compared Moscovitch’s (2009) social anxiety model to existing cognitive models.
• This model uniquely predicts social fears, feared consequences, and safety behaviours.
• Fears of showing signs of anxiety was a unique predictor across all outcomes, particularly safety behaviour use.
• Despite unique predictive value, this revised model has conceptual overlap with fear of negative evaluation.
• This research supports further investigations of Moscovitch’s revised model, especially related to fears of showing anxiety.

Cognitive-behavioural models propose that excessive fear of negative evaluation is central to social anxiety. Moscovitch (2009) instead proposes that perceived deficiencies in three self attributes: fears of showing signs of anxiety, deficits in physical appearance, or deficits in social competence are at the core of social anxiety. However, these attributes are likely to overlap with fear of negative evaluation. Responses to an online survey of 286 participants with a range of social anxiety severity were analysed using hierarchical multiple regression to identify the overall unique predictive value of Moscovitch’s model. Altogether, Moscovitch’s model provided improvements in the prediction of safety behaviours, types of fears and cognitions; however only the fear of showing anxiety subscale provided unique information. This research supports further investigations into the utility of this revised model, particularly related to utility of explicitly assessing and addressing fears of showing anxiety.