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.
↧