Exploring the latent structure of two cognitive components of social anxiety: taxometric analyses of fears of negative and positive evaluation.

BACKGROUND: Recent evidence suggests that social anxiety disorder is best characterized as having a dimensional latent structure.

METHODS: In this study, we examined the latent structure of two cognitive components of social anxiety, fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and fear of positive evaluation (FPE), in a large undergraduate sample. Two taxometric procedures (MAMBAC, Mean Above Minus Below a Cut and MAXEIG, MAXimum EIGenvalue) were performed with indicator sets drawn from self-report measures of FNE and FPE.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Taxometric analyses, as well as comparison analyses utilizing simulated dimensional and taxonic datasets, yielded converging evidence that both FNE and FPE have a dimensional latent structure.