Testing the Bivalent Fear of Evaluation Model of Social Anxiety: The Relationship between Fear of Positive Evaluation, Social Anxiety, and Perfectionism

Abstract

The Bivalent Fear of Evaluation (BFOE) model of social anxiety proposes that fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and fear of positive evaluation (FPE) play distinct roles in social anxiety. Research is however lacking in terms of how FPE is related to perfectionism and how these constructs interact to predict social anxiety. Participants were 382 individuals from the general community and included an oversampling of individuals with social anxiety. Measures of FPE, FNE, perfectionism, and social anxiety were administered. Results were mostly consistent with the predictions made by the BFOE model and showed that accounting for confounding variables, FPE correlated negatively with high standards but positively with maladaptive perfectionism. FNE was also positively correlated with maladaptive perfectionism, but there was no significant relationship between FNE and high standards. Also consistent with BFOE model, both FNE and FPE significantly moderated the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and social anxiety with the relationship strengthened at high levels of FPE and FNE. These findings provide additional support for the BFOE model and implications are discussed.

Keywords:

• Fear of positive evaluation
• fear of negative evaluation
• high standards perfectionism
• maladaptive perfectionism
• social anxiety

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Mr Robert Potter, Ms Megan Smalley and Ms Jessica Scott for their assistance in data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.