Abstract

This study aimed to explore the perceptions of safety cues in social anxiety. One hundred participants were requested to read four segments of a scenario, rate the safety of the situation, and rate the anxiey. The conditions consisted of social-safety, social-threat, nonsocial-safety, and nonsocial-threat scenarios. When safety cues were presented in a social context, the high social anxiety group showed a significant increase in perceived safety compared to the low and middle social anxiety groups. Under the same conditions, the change in anxiety in the high social anxiety group was also significant, with no significant differences observed in the other groups. This study indicates that social anxiety is related to high sensitivity to safety cues in a social context. These results were not observed in the nonsocial context, suggesting a context-specific effect of social anxiety. This study also suggests that successful perception of safety cues by individuals with high social anxiety may lead to a reduction in anxiety.