Effects of Social Self-Awareness Priming on Level of Social Anxiety and the Moderating Role of Personality Type

Previous research has correlated high levels of negative self-monitoring and social self-awareness with social anxiety. However, the effects of manipulating social self-monitoring and social self-awareness have not been researched extensively. The current research aims to study the effects of manipulating social self-awareness, through the use of a prime, on participants' measured level of social anxiety. First, a Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) will also be used to measure participant introversion/extraversion. Then, participants will be randomly assigned to one of three possible primes that will elicit either a positive, neutral, or negative social self-awareness. Participants' level of social anxiety will then be measured using a modified Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, which will assess fear and confidence toward completing different social tasks. Finally, an open ended narrative will be used to assess participants' level of negative bias in their memory of a social event. It is predicted that a positive prime will lead to lower levels of social anxiety, and a negative prime will lead to higher levels of social anxiety. It is also predicted that the independent variable of personality will act as a moderator between the independent variable of social self-awareness prime and the dependent variables of social anxiety level and negative social bias in memory. Furthermore, it is predicted that the moderating role of personality will differ, depending on the type of prime used (positive, neutral, or negative).