Social anxiety predicts avoidance behaviour in virtual encounters

Abstract

Avoidant behaviour is critical in social anxiety and social phobia, being a major factor in the maintenance of anxiety. However, almost all previous studies of social avoidance were restricted to using self-reports for the study of intentional aspects of avoidance. In contrast, the current study used immersive virtual reality technology to measure interpersonal distance as an index of avoidance, an unintentional behavioural indicator. In a virtual supermarket, twenty-three female participants differing in social anxiety approached computer-generated persons (avatars) under the pretext of a cover story. During the task, different aspects of approach and avoidance were measured. The results confirmed the hypotheses: The more anxious participants were, the more slowly they approached the avatars, and the larger the distance they kept from the avatars. This indicates that even sub-phobic social anxiety is related to unintentional avoidance behaviour in social situations.

Keywords:

• Social anxiety
• Approach
• Avoidance
• Virtual reality

Acknowledgements

This study was conducted at the Radboud Immersive Virtual Environment Research Lab (RIVERlab). It was supported by the Behavioural Science Institute, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and by a grant to Daniel Wigboldus from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO; 480–05–010).

We are grateful to Jeroen Derks and Hubert Voogd for their technical assistance, and to the reviewers for helpful comments.