Fear of Negative and Positive Evaluation across Social Evaluative Situations

Fear of negative and fear of positive evaluation are both important in understanding social evaluative anxiety. Fear of negative evaluation has been linked with social anxiety, public speaking anxiety, and test anxiety; whereas fear of positive evaluation has only been linked with social anxiety. This paper reviews the literature on fear of negative and positive evaluation in relation to each of the social evaluative situations and then presents the findings of a study that will attempt to differentiate the three types of social evaluative situations. Fear of negative evaluation was correlated with each of the three social evaluative situations; whereas fear of positive evaluation was correlated with both social anxiety and test anxiety but not public speaking anxiety. Finally, social anxiety did not moderate the relationships of FPE with either test anxiety or public speaking anxiety. These findings provide a better understanding of the types of evaluation fears that individuals with social anxiety, public speaking anxiety, and test anxiety may exhibit, which should be considered when assessing distorted cognitions.