The Effect of Stressful and Relaxing Environmental Stimuli on Social Anxiety and Social Willingness. A Research

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a mental condition that causes people with the condition to often shy away from situations where there may arise the danger of unfavorable evaluation by others. Widely used therapies for SAD include cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), exposure therapy, and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT). However, there is little quantitative support for the effects of the environment on the level of social anxiety. This paper, therefore, aims to bridge the gap by conducting quantitative research to discuss the effects of environmental change (relaxing and stressful environments) on levels of social willingness and social anxiety. The experiment used the Electrocardiogram & Cognitive Assessment System (ECAS) to provide environmental stimuli, the psychological scales, including the social interaction anxiety scale (SIAS), the state-trait anxiety inventory (STAI), and a social willingness question (SWQ), and the physiological scales, specifically the electrocardiogram (ECG) measurement. Within-subject test was used to determine the change in data before and after the environmental stimuli, and a correlational study between psychological and physiological measurements was conducted to minimize the self-report bias and to ensure the validity of results. The results showed that there is a strong causal relationship between environment and social anxiety level, given that participants showed decreased anxiety levels and increased social willingness under a relaxing environment, while showing the opposite outcome under a stressful environment. The implications and limitations of the findings were discussed, and a suggestion for future study has been proposed.

Keywords:  social anxiety disorder, environmental stimuli, relaxing and stressful environment, social willingness, SIAS, STAI, ECG, within-subject test, correlation analysis.