Director of Clinical Training & Professor University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida
Personality can be explored hierarchically with higher- and lower-order factors. Recent research suggests the personality hierarchy is comprised of higher-order Big Five traits with two lower-order factors per Big Five trait, termed aspects. There is a lack of research examining the relationship between these lower-order aspects and dimensional social anxiety (SA) severity. To better understand these relationships, 443 university undergraduate students (72.2% female; mean age = 20.48, SD = 4.64) completed the Big Five Aspects Scale (BFAS) and the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory- 23 (SPAI-23), and were retained following exclusionary criteria. Path analysis, covarying for sex, age, and general anxiety severity, was used to examine the relationship between social anxiety severity and the 10 aspect scores from the BFAS (i.e., volatility, withdrawal, compassion, politeness, industriousness, orderliness, enthusiasm, assertiveness, intelligence, openness). Significant relationships with SA severity were found for withdrawal (positive), orderliness (positive), enthusiasm (negative), and assertiveness (negative). Findings suggest that a unique pattern of lower-order personality is associated with SA severity. Clinicians can use these findings in treatment through the incorporation of skills that target improvement within these aspects. These findings serve as a basis for future research on lower-order personality traits and dimensional SA. Further research is needed to clarify whether personality profiles differ according to diagnostic versus dimensional social anxiety.
