ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) not only believe that their anxiety response is out of control in social situations but also that it can be easily noticed by other people, which increases their level of public self-consciousness and self-focused attention. Individuals with SAD are apprehensive in social situations in part because they perceive the social standard as being high. Cognitive models of SAD have placed a particular emphasis on self-perception as an important maintaining factor of the disorder. Post-event rumination is a frequently occurring phenomenon after an unsuccessful or ambiguously successful social encounter, especially after situations that are associated with high-perceived social costs and negative self-perception because of the assumed catastrophic outcome of a social situation. In the treatment, social standards are questioned in cognitive interventions but also receive direct attention in discussions of appropriate exposure goals. The effects of goal setting on information processing have been well researched by action theorists.
