The Effect of Metacognitive Therapy on Symptoms of Fear of Negative Evaluation in Patients Afflicted with Social Phobia

Background and Fear of negative evaluation consists of anxiousness about other people’s evaluation of oneself, worries resulting from these negative evaluations, and the expectations from others, that they would develop only negative evaluations of one. The purpose of the present study was to determine the effect of metacognitive therapy (MÇT) on symptoms of fear of negative evaluation in social phobia disorder patients. This study was carried out as a controlled clinical trial. Participants were referred from clinics in the city of Shiraz, Ïran, and 19 patients were selected. They were randomly assigned to either the experimental or the control group. Âfter running the pretest, which was done using the fears of negative evaluation scale (FNË) and social phobia symptoms assessment questionnaire (SPSÂQ), the experimental group received 8 weekly metacognitive intervention sessions, while the control group received no intervention. Post-test and follow-up (after 3 months) were performed using the same tools. The results of analysis of multivariate covariance showed that MÇT had a significant effect on alleviating the symptoms of fear of negative evaluation (p<0.05).Çonclusion: This intervention emphasizes on the promotion of efficient adaptive and flexible skills through metacognitive processes and their effect on a decrease in fear of negative evaluation in patients suffering social phobia disorder.