Social anxiety and socially prescribed perfectionism: Unique and interactive relationships with maladaptive appraisal of interpersonal situations

Although investigators have suggested that maladaptive appraisal of interpersonal situations may be related to perfectionist characteristics of socially anxious persons, little research has addressed this notion. In this study, the joint role of social anxiety and socially prescribed perfectionism (SPP; Hewitt & Flett, 1991a) was assessed relative to participants’ appraisal of an interpersonal situation. Results showed that social anxiety and SPP were related with the discrepancy between participants’ ratings of others’ performance standards for them and ratings of their own self-efficacy for an upcoming conversation, and that SPP moderated the relationship between social anxiety and the discrepancy. Second, only social anxiety was related with the frequency of negative self-statements; however, SPP moderated the relationship between social anxiety and participants’ negative self-statements relative to the conversation. For both interactions, the greater an anxious person’s SPP, the greater their degree of maladaptive appraisal. Results are discussed relative to theoretical and clinical implications of the findings.