Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Social Interaction Anxiety: Understanding the Treatment Approach

Abstract

The current study set out to investigate how well undergraduate students’ social interaction anxiety may be decreased by cognitive-behavioral therapy. The Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (Jerin et al., 2017) was employed to measure social interaction anxiety. Two phases of random selection were used to create the sample: in the first, 563 students (269 males and 294 females) were evaluated. Students having a high value of SIAS (61–80) at this stage are found to exhibit social interaction anxiety symptoms. A total of 32 socially anxious students were divided into two groups at random in the second stage: 16 students (8 males and 8 females) made up the experimental group, and 16 students (8 males and 8 females) made up the control group. In this investigation, pre-post outcome design was used. In this investigation, an intervention was given to the experimental group but not to the control group. One-way ANOVA, paired sample t-test, and independent sample t-test were used to examine the collected data. The study’s conclusions indicated that there was no difference in students’ SIAS scores based on their socioeconomic status and gender. However, the results showed a significant difference in the experimental group’s SIAS scores between the pre and post-test. The results also showed a significant difference in SIAS scores between the experimental and control groups. It might be suggested that undergraduate students utilize cognitive-behavioral group therapy to manage their social anxiety.