Bimodal assessment in a stressful social encounter: Individual differences, lead-lag relationships, and response styles

Analogue social-stress situations have assumed an important role in the assessment of social anxiety. However, psychophysiological assessment of social anxiety in these laboratory situations has produced inconsistent results. Notably, the empirical relationship between autonomic reactivity and behavioral indices of social anxiety has fluctuated widely. The present study examined the relationship between heart rate and behavioral ratings of social anxiety in a normal college-student sample utilizing a methodology which (a) addressed individual differences, (b) utilized a relatively unobtrusive heart-rate monitoring system, and (c) assessed time-lag relationships between the two measures. Cross-lagged correlations for the full sample of 25 subjects and a subset of heart-rate reactives showed large intersubject variability between the measures. The results support the lack of convergence between the two modes of measurement when subjects are considered as an aggregate.