The relationship between five factor model personality traits and social anxiety

The thesis investigates individual differences in the expression of social anxiety. Firstly, the impact of personality traits on cross-cultural expression of anxiety was examined. Structural equation modelling was used to examine whether samples would differ in the relationship between social anxiety and personality. Community sample from Australia (n = 374) and Brazil (n = 329) completed the measures of personality and social anxiety. Results suggest that the model of social anxiety and personality seems to be the same across both cultural groups; the Brazilian sample was found to have a significant, stronger relationship between social anxiety and neuroticism than the Australian sample; the dissimilarities might be attributed to individual differences within each culture. Secondly, the thesis investigated whether individual differences in personality were related to differences in severity of social fears in three types of social situations (interaction, performance, and public speaking). Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to test whether the personality domains uniquely predict participants' ratings of fear for the three social fear domains, in two separate samples: community (n = 358) and clinical (n = 217). The results indicate that the five personality domains have different patterns of association with the social fear score depending on the type of situation and the sample (clinical vs. community). Lastly, the thesis explored whether differences in personality moderate treatment outcome in social anxiety disorder. Participants were a clinical sample (n =192) subjects who were referred or self-referred to 12-week group Cognitive-Behavioural treatment for social anxiety disorder. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were conducted to explore the moderating effects of personality traits on social anxiety symptoms change with treatment. Results indicated that participants with high levels of agreeableness and extraversion and social anxiety at pre-treatment had more improvement in social anxiety than participants with low agreeableness and extraversion. As a whole, the results of the thesis suggest that personality characteristics are important in the expression of social anxiety.