Social Anxiety and Speaker Gaze in a Persuasive Atmosphere

Abstract Twenty females scoring low and 20 females scoring high on a pretested measure of social anxiety participated in an experiment to investigate the role of social anxiety in a persuasive situation. Results supported the hypothesis that social anxiety mediates the tendency for subjects to direct their gazes at an agreeing or disagreeing confederate when expressing their views on a controversial topic. As expected, socially anxious Ss spent less time gazing at the other participants than did socially secure Ss. Moreover, socially anxious Ss spent significantly less time gazing toward a disagreeing confederate than did socially secure subjects. On the other hand, no significant differences were found between socially anxious and secure Ss′ gazes at an agreeing confederate. These results are interpreted from a social control perspective.