Social Cost Bias, Probability Bias, and Self-Efficacy as Correlates of Behavioral Action in Social Anxiety.
Self-efficacy, not probability or cost fears, drives socially anxious young adults to act.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked college students how anxious they feel in social situations. They also asked about three thinking habits: fearing high social cost, overestimating bad odds, and doubting their own ability.
Students then reported how likely they were to take social risks like speaking up in class. The goal was to see which thoughts best predict real action.
What they found
Only self-efficacy, the "I can do it" belief, directly predicted who would act. The two worry biases did not add extra punch once self-efficacy was counted.
In plain words, confident students moved forward even when they still thought bad things might happen.
How this fits with other research
Okuno et al. (2022) extend the story to high-schoolers. They show that safety behaviors, not just thoughts, link anxiety to real social-skills gaps. Together the papers say: thoughts matter, but what you do with your body counts too.
Edgin et al. (2017) look at teens with mild intellectual disability. They also find negative interpretation bias, showing the survey pattern holds across ability levels. The 2018 study widens the lens back to neurotypical students and adds the self-efficacy twist.
Ohta (1987) offers a behavior-analytic caution. The critique argues self-efficacy is just a mirror of past reinforcement. Read together, the 2018 finding may simply show students with good social histories expect more success.
Why it matters
When you prep exposure sessions, spend less energy arguing about odds or embarrassment. Spend more time building the client's belief that they can handle the task. Quick wins, modeled practice, and praise build self-efficacy faster than cognitive debate.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Start the next exposure by asking the client to state one past social success, then shape a slightly harder step to reinforce the "I can" belief.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The present study investigated the role of social cost bias, probability bias, and self-efficacy as correlates of behavioral action in a nonclinical sample of 197 individuals, using a series of vignettes and self-report measures. The findings indicated that, as hypothesized, social cost bias, probability bias, and self-efficacy were associated with social anxiety. While social anxiety was associated with behavioral action, the three cognitive factors were associated with behavioral action above and beyond the contribution of social anxiety. However, contrary to the hypothesis, self-efficacy was the only cognitive factor directly associated with behavioral action when all variables were in the model. This information has implications for potential methods and target mechanisms for increasing client engagement with exposures and behavioral experiments in treatments for social anxiety.
Behavior modification, 2018 · doi:10.1177/0145445517720447