The effectiveness of «Task Concentration Training» technique on Reducing Fear of Negative Evaluation in People with Social Anxiety Disorder

Social anxiety disorder is characterized by the fear of negative evaluation and high level of anxiety and avoidance of social and functional situations. The purpose of the research is to investigate the effectiveness of task concentration training technique on reducing fear of negative evaluation in people with social anxiety disorder.

This is a quasi-experimental research. The participants were all the students of Shahed University who were analyzed by Social Phobia Questionnaire (Connor et al. 2000), Semi-Structured Clinical Interviews (Frest, 1996) and Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (Leary, 1983). After confirming the social anxiety disorder, 20 people were selected as experimental and control group randomly. The experimental group received task concentration training but the control group received no intervention.

The findings showed that using task concentration training technique leads to significant decrease in fear of negative evaluation in experimental group in comparison with the control group (t=2.76, p= 0.013).

While the obtaining results are consistent with other results, they provide a preliminary context for using the mentioned technique for reducing the social anxiety symptoms in Iranian samples. However, future researches should present suitability of this technique in different dimensions.