Social Anxiety Among College Students and Its Relation to Negative Self-Portrayal

Abstract

Social anxiety is a fear of social activities, and the people associated with them, which leads to high levels of anxiety, and serves as a reason for the socially-anxious person to avoid them.People with social anxiety disorder frequently report experiencing heightened negative self-portrayal i.e., a person who would negatively evaluate themselves in relation to the way they think they appear before others in feared social situations. The purpose of this study was to find the relationship between college students ‘social anxiety and their negative self-portrayal, age group between 18 to 25 years. Seventy (N= 70) undergraduate and post graduate students completed self-report measure of social anxiety scale and negative self-portrayal scale The collected data is analyzed by using correlation and regression. Results suggested that the college students who have more level of social anxiety also experience a significant level of negative self-portrayal. In addition, the negative portrayal of social competencies has significant relationship with their social anxiety but the negative portrayal does not have significant relationship with social anxiety, the study also revealed that there was no gender difference in negative self-portrayal and social anxietyand Clinical implications of these results are discussed.