assume that others will interpret their physical symptoms as normal (perhaps 
a sign of feeling hot, being hungry, and so on).
UÊWhen presented with an ambiguous social situation (for example, a stare 
from someone else or a phone call that isn’t returned), people with ele -
vated social anxiety have a heightened tendency to interpret the situation 
negatively.
UÊSocial anxiety is associated with a tendency to rate ambiguous or neutral 
faces as having a more negative expression.
UÊCompared with people who are less anxious, people with social anxiety dis -
order tend to pay more attention to information that represents social threat 
than to nonthreatening information. For example, when asked to look at lists 
of words, people who are socially anxious spend more time looking at words