The role of the cognitive coping strategy of defensive pessimism within the social-evaluative continuum

Individuals with anxiety disorders commonly employ coping strategies as a means of reducing their anxiety when confronting a stressful situation. For individuals with social-evaluative concerns, coping strategies such as self-handicapping, self-focused attention, safety-seeking behaviors, and post-event processing are frequently used and have been empirically examined. Defensive pessimism, a coping strategy that involves setting low expectations for an approaching performance despite having performed well in the past and mentally rehearsing possible outcomes for the performance, seems to be frequently used by individuals high in social-evaluative concerns as well. It is unclear, however, what specific benefits, if any, are derived from the use of defensive pessimism for individuals with higher degrees of social-evaluative concern.

This study examined the utility of knowing one's degree of social-evaluative concern and degree of defensive pessimism in predicting approach behavior, avoidance behavior, self-expectations for the task, self-focused attention, external locus of anxiety control, and recall of past unsuccessful speaking performances. Results indicated that among individuals with greater social-evaluative concern, higher use of defensive pessimism was related to greater avoidance behavior and recall of more past unsuccessful speaking performances. Among individuals with greater social-evaluative concern, use of defensive pessimism was not related to significant differences in approach behavior, selfexpectations for the task, self-focused attention, or external locus of anxiety control. These results suggest that for individuals with greater social-evaluative concern, greater use of defensive pessimism was not related to any predicted benefits which might assist in reducing and or coping with anxiety, compared to lower use of defensive pessimism. The results of this study also illustrate the importance of differentiating between the score participants need in order to be satisfied with their performance (performance need) and the score they actually anticipate achieving for their performance (expected score) for an anticipated speech. Finally, the results of this study suggest the need for future studies examining present and post-event anxiety.