Do Discrepancy-Relevant Contexts Activate Self-Discrepancies in Socially Anxious College Students?

Self-discrepancy theory proposes that people are prone to anxiety when their beliefs about how they are differ from their beliefs about how others expect them to be (Higgins, 1987). The empirical evidence, however, does not consistently lend support to predictions from this theory (Mason et al., 2019). Higgins (1999b) argues that three conditions that must be met to observe specific relationships proposed by self-discrepancy theory: (1) participants must have elevated distress, (2) participants should have recent, relevant experience, and (3) self-discrepancies assessed should be relevant to the context of distress. In the current study, 128 participants with high SA provided information about distress and self-discrepancies after experiencing inclusion or exclusion during the Cyberball task. Results did not indicate a specific relationship between ought discrepancies and SA, suggesting that Higgins’ (1999b) conditions may be incomplete. Exploratory analyses revealed that condition and SA interacted to predict ideal discrepancies, offering novel contributions.