Running head: THEORY OF MIND AND SOCIAL ANXIETY 1

An Examination of Theory of Mind and Social Anxiety

Peyton Carrington

High Point University

THEORY OF MIND AND SOCIAL ANXIETY 2

Abstract
The current goal of this study is to examine the relationship between social anxiety and theory of

mind. In a world where social anxiety levels are increasing, it is important to understand

contributing factors in order to help those struggling with social anxiety. It is expected that

theory of mind levels affects social anxiousness. Participants were asked to fill out a

demographic sheet, two theory of mind tasks and two measures of social anxiety. Results showed

that there seems to be a significant negative correlation between theory of mind and social

anxiety; however, there were not significant correlations across the board. These correlations will

be discussed, and applications of this work will be examined in future works.

Keywords: theory of mind, social anxiety

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An Examination of Theory of Mind and Social Anxiety

Studies insinuate that social anxiety and theory of mind are related, as individuals with

social anxiety may struggle to understand others’ mental states and have difficulty reasoning

others’ beliefs, emotions and intentions. This difficulty can hinder their abilities to predict

thoughts, actions and intentions, especially in social situations and is related to their theory of

mind. Research suggests that those with theory of mind deficits have trouble evaluating others’

thoughts, which leads them to experience social impairment (Baron-Cohen, 1995, 2005; Baron-

Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, 1985; Frith, 1989). In addition, it is also possible difficulties in

identifying and reasoning about others’ intentions and emotions lead people to experience social

anxiety.

Research shows that lower levels of theory of mind in early adolescence can increase the

chance of developing social anxiety disorder (Banerjee & Henderson, 2001), and higher levels of

theory of mind are related to social competencies (Hughes et al., 2006; Zerwas et al., 2004).

Some symptoms of social anxiety disorder include fear of situations in which one may be judged,

worrying about embarrassing or humiliating oneself, and intense fear of interacting or talking

with strangers. These discoveries suggest that those with theory of mind deficits have more

difficulty predicting the behaviors of others and are less able to adapt to complex social

situations. Theory of mind development precedes the potential development of social anxiety

disorder, so a lack of higher theory of mind development in early childhood could result in more

negative social experiences, lack of self-confidence, higher levels of avoidance, and social

anxiety (Carpendale & Lewis, 2004).

Washburn, Wilson, Roes, Rnic, and Harkness (2015) conducted a study in which

differences in theory of mind were examined in a sample of 119 young adults. These researchers
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questioned to what extent deficits in theory of mind in individuals with social anxiety disorder

can be explained by comorbid conditions associated with social-cognitive impairment. There is

reason to believe that individuals with comorbid social anxiety disorder and major depressive

disorder may show lower functioning theory of mind than non-comorbid conditions. Their study

compared theory of mind decoding and reasoning precision across four diagnostic groups, those

with social anxiety disorder (SAD), those with a lifetime diagnosis of major depressive disorder

(MDD), comorbid SAD and MDD, and healthy controls with no history of psychiatric

conditions.

Participants were selected from an introductory psychology class and completed the Beck

Depression Inventory-II and the Social Anxiety and Avoidance Scale for Adolescents before the

experiment was conducted. They were then assigned to groups based on their clinical diagnoses

and participants completed the Reading the Mind in the Eyes and Movie for the Assessment of

Cognition tasks in counter-balanced order. Researchers found that the SAD only group

performed significantly poorer on the eyes task than the MDD only group, and the

SAD only and comorbid groups made more excessive theory of mind faults than the lifetime

MDD group. Results showed that SAD individuals had less accuracy in decoding the eye

expressions and slight social features than those with MDD. Furthermore, participants with SAD

over-interpreted others’ thoughts, emotions, and intentions.

Another study conducted by Hezel and McNally (2014) explored whether people with

SAD had lower levels of theory of mind than typical development individuals. To test this, 40

SAD and 40 non-SAD participants were selected to complete socially relevant theory of mind

tasks that required them to decipher others’ emotions and judge their mental states. Participants

were randomly assigned to a cognitive or no cognitive load condition and completed Mind in the
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Eyes and Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition tasks, which were divided into Part A

and Part B tasks, and the load condition took a memory task before completing Part B. The

results of this study showed that participants with SAD performed worse on theory of mind

tasks, and they were more likely to attribute stronger emotions to others’ thoughts and feelings.

Therefore, lower theory of mind capability may produce social cue misunderstandings and

therefore increase anxiety in SAD individuals. In addition to social cue misunderstandings,

another factor that could be related to theory of mind and social anxiety is shyness.

In fact, shyness may help explain why some children might have some difficulty

understanding social cues. Research findings explore the relation between low theory of mind

and shyness and the extent to which children’s theory of mind and ability to control their fear of

social interactions relates to social anxiety symptoms (Baron-Cohen, 1989). These researchers

suggest that individuals with theory of mind deficits less frequently understand what to expect

from other people and are therefore less able to adapt to complex social situations. It is possible

that social anxiety symptoms may be associated with a low understanding of emotions.

Researchers have distinguished between positive and negative shyness facial expressions, where

both are involuntary behavioral reactions (Colonnesi et al. 2014; Nikolić et al. 2016). Shyness

and social anxiety are found to be related, however shyness severity only accounts for 22% of

social anxiety disorder variance (Heiser et al. 2003). Therefore, children’s level of theory of

mind and their tendency to display positive or negative shyness may indicate their early level of

social anxiety.

A study conducted by Colonnesi, Nikolić, de Vente, & Bögels (2017) investigated how

theory of mind and shyness, expressed both negatively and positively, were associated with

social anxiety in 4.5-year-old children and the interplay between children’s theory of mind and
THEORY OF MIND AND SOCIAL ANXIETY 6

shyness expressions on their social anxiety levels. One hundred and ten children completed a

shortened version of the TOM-test-r (Muris et al. 1999; Steerneman et al. 2009) and their parents

completed the Preschool Anxiety Scale (PAS-R; Edwards et al. 2010) to measure children’s

social anxiety levels. The study found that a low basic level of theory of mind is associated with

early social anxiety symptoms and high levels of negative expressions of shyness during socially

stressful scenarios. Moreover, children’s high levels of social anxiety were associated with a low

basic theory of mind. This finding may relate to relate to children’s recognition and

comprehension of humor.

An interesting application of research on theory of mind and social anxiety is the

examination of how these factors influence the understanding of humor. Humor plays an

important role in social interaction, as it generates positive emotions (Martin, 2007; Ruch, 2007).

In this study, participants with differing degrees of social anxiety were exposed to humorous

stimuli with varying requirements of social cognition to understand the joke and rated them

based on understanding and funniness. Researchers hoped to use humor to analyze social anxiety

through cognitive mechanisms. When presented with theory of mind (TOM) cartoons, one must

comprehend the (false) mental states of the characters to understand the joke. Therefore, the

participants’ appreciation of different jokes may reflect their own abilities to decipher their

emotional states.

The study examined 56fifty-six participants who were all presented with three groups of

cartoons, TOM, visual puns (PUN) and semantic cartoons (SEM), and one control condition of

non-humorous pictures. TOM cartoons were defined as those in which one must interpret the

(false) mental states of the characters to understand the humor, PUN as cartoons where the joke

is based on the visual similarity of two different items that may overlap in meaning, and SEM
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where the punch line is based on the visual differences and possible semantic relationship

between two items. Results found that high degrees of social anxiety were associated with less

amusement of cartoons involving theory of mind, therefore suggesting that humor playing with

others’ mental states is unamusing to highly socially anxious individuals.

The present study examines theory of mind and social anxiety. While previous research

has found that those with lower levels of theory of mind have more difficulty interacting and

adapting to different social situations, this study targets college students typically to evaluate

how they assess and respond to different social scenarios based on their theory of mind

development. We hypothesize that people with more developed theory of mind are less socially

anxious, and they are more connected in social settings. Investigating these hypotheses can lead

to future research and potentially training those with lower theory of mind better adapt to social

situations and cues.

Method

Participants

This study included 78 students from High Point. The age of participants ranged from 18

to 22 years (M = 19.5), SD=?). Half of the participants were male and half were female.

Materials

Four conventional surveys were used: the Mind-Reading Belief Scale (MBS; Realo et al.,

2003), the Reading the Mind in the Eyes (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Spong, Scahill, &

Lawson, 2001), the Social Interaction Anxiety Questionnaire (SIAQ) (Mörtberg, Reuterskiöld,

Tillfors, Furmark, & Öst, 2017), and the Social Anxiety Questionnaire (SAQ) (Caballo, Salazar,

Irurtia, Arias, & Hofmann, 2012). Additionally, participants completed a questionnaire

concerning demographic information such as age, gender, and current year in college. Students
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chose if they were an athlete and at what level (club, intramural or division 1), if they are

currently romantic relationships, and if so, how long. They were also asked to identify if they

had any siblings, and if so, how many were older and younger.

In this packet, the MBS Scale (MBS; Realo et al., 2003) includes 5 out of the 8 self-

report statements regarding mind-reading beliefs, including the abilities to perceive others’ (1)

personality traits, (2) mental states, (3) roles, identity, or status, and (4) prediction of future

behavior. This scale contains items such as, “I can read people’s intentions in their faces” and “It

is possible to say what a person actually feels by their covert behavior”, which are reported based

on a scale ranging from 1 to 5, where 1 is strongly disagree and 5 is strongly agree.

In the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Spong, Scahill,

Lawson, 2001), participants are presented with ten images of sets of eyes and four-word choices

for what the person in the picture is thinking or feeling. The purpose of this test is to assess one’s

ability to infer social causality.

The SIAQ measures anxiety or fear towards social interaction (Mörtberg, Reuterskiöld,

Tillfors, Furmark, & Öst, 2017). It consists of five self-statements that describe normal reactions

to a variety of social interactions, including items such as, “When mixing in a group, I find

myself worrying I will be ignored” and “I am at ease meeting people in parties etc.”, which are

reported based on a scale ranging from 1 to 5, where 1 is strongly disagree and 5 is strongly

agree.

The SAQ is a series of ten social situations that may or may not cause one to feel unease,

stress, or nervousness (Caballo, Salazar, Irurtia, Arias, & Hofmann, 2012). Situations were

categorized into five factors: public speaking, interactions with the opposite sex, asserting

expressions of annoyance, disgust, or displeasure, interactions with strangers, and criticism and
THEORY OF MIND AND SOCIAL ANXIETY 9

embarrassment. This questionnaire includes items such as, “Speaking in public” and “Making

new friends”, which are reported based on a scale ranging from 1 to 5, where 1 is strongly

disagree and 5 is strongly agree.

Procedure

Participants signed a consent form and then completed a questionnaire packet. The packet

included a demographic data sheet and the measures described above. After they completed the

packet, participants were debriefed and free to leave.

Results

Pearson product-moment correlations were ran based on each of the hypotheses. There

was a significant positive correlation between the two social anxiety scales, SIAQ and SAQ,

r(75) = .732, p < .05. The SAQ scores were significantly negatively correlated with the MBS

performance, r(75) = -0.303, p < .05. The SIAQ scores were also significantly negatively

correlated with scores on the MBS, r(76) = -.287, p < .05. The SAQ was found to be

significantly negatively correlated with the Reading of the Mind in the Eyes, r(75) = -.253, p < .

05; however, the SIAQ was not significantly correlated with the Reading of the Mind in the

Eyes, r(75) = -.148, p > .05.

Discussion

The research supported both hypotheses that people with more developed theory of mind

are less socially anxious and are more connected in social settings, finding that both social

anxiety scales, SIAQ and SAQ were significantly positively correlated with each other. If one

were to score high on one of the social anxiety scales, it is likely that they would score high on

the other, as both scales measure social anxiety. Additionally, both social anxiety scales were

significantly negatively correlated with the MBS, which assesses normal adults' beliefs about
THEORY OF MIND AND SOCIAL ANXIETY 10

their own mind-reading abilities and whether they can estimate how well he or she is at judging

other person's traits, states of mind, emotions, and intentions in relation to the others. Therefore,

those with higher theory of mind have less social anxiety.

The SAQ was found to be significantly negatively correlated with the Reading of the

Mind in the Eyes; however, the SIAQ had no significant correlation with the Reading of the

Mind in the Eyes. Whereas the SAQ assesses social phobia, the SIAQ assesses fear or anxiety

towards general social interaction. Both of these questionnaires were self-evaluated. The findings

show that the higher the participants’ social anxiety, the lower their theory of mind, which agree

with the previous results from the SAQ and MBS. However, as the SIAQ had no significant

correlation to the Reading of the Mind in the Eyes, there may be some differences on how

participants assessed themselves on the SIAQ versus the SAQ. The SIAQ has questions that

address social interactions as general encounters, and the SAQ addresses more specific social

situations.

These studies were limited by the small sample size and short length of the

questionnaires. Future research should work with more detailed questionnaires and not only

larger sample sizes, but samples with more diverse populations. For future studies, researchers

should also use different theory of mind tests. There are two model that assess theory of mind,

the Empathizing System and the Mindreading System, and the Reading of the Mind in the Eyes

test only analyzes the Empathizing System (Baren-Cohen, 2005). It is possible that the

Mindreading System may be more important when analyzing social anxiety.

The Reading of the Mind in the Eyes tests examines the ability for people to read eyes

and only looks at the Empathizing System. This system is a subsystem in the Baron-Cohen

model and focuses on the Emotion Detector, which represents emotional states between two
THEORY OF MIND AND SOCIAL ANXIETY 11

people, and the Empathizing System, which permits an empathic response of another person’s

emotions and assumes that there is an associated drive to help other people. The Mindreading

System focuses on interpreting others’ actions as driven by mental states and includes the

Intentionality Detector that interprets moving objects as having intention, Eye Direction Detector

that detects the presence of eyes or eye-like stimuli and determines if an organism’s eyes are

looking at something, Shared-Attention Mechanism that involves triadic interactions and joint-

attention episodes, and Theory of Mind Module that includes passing false-belief tasks. Tasks

involving use of the mindreading system should be used in future research as it may relate more

to social anxiety.

Research should also be done on children with social anxiety. As children are still

growing, their theory of mind is still developing, whereas adults have more experience and more

developed theory of mind. If correlations between theory of mind and social anxiety can be

found in children at a young age, maybe training could be done to reduce their social anxiety

while their theory of mind is still developing. Although it may be more effective to focus on

treatment for children who are still developing, researchers could focus on treatment for adults

and work on social skills training, practice with reading emotions, or other cues that some people

pick up on naturally with experience that people with social anxiety has a more difficult time

noticing because they are too anxious to notice social signals. By focusing on treatment for social

anxiety, researchers can find effective ways to catch social anxiety symptoms early in life and

help those with social anxiety function in a social world.

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