Preregistration: Fear of Evaluation and Emotion Regulation in Adolescents’ Daily Life and Their Implications for Social Anxiety – An Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

In recent years, fear of positive evaluation has emerged as one of the core aspects of social anxiety, alongside fear of negative evaluation. It appears to be one of the main drivers of the positivity impairment that socially anxious individuals often report, as it is associated with decreased positive affect in social situations, fewer positive social events and positive emotions in general, and the disqualification of positive social events when they do occur. These evaluative fears tend to intensify during adolescence, a developmental period characterized by greater autonomy, increased affective reactivity, and socialization pressures. Moreover, the strain that these changes place on adolescents is thought to lay the foundation for the development of various deficits in emotion regulation, which have also been shown to be associated with social anxiety. The goal of this study is to examine the relationships between fear of positive/negative evaluation and social anxiety (Level 2), the reception of positive and negative feedback, affective state, and emotion regulation in the daily life (Level 1) of ~ 50 adolescents aged 14 to 18 using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Participants will be asked to answer questions six times a day over a two-week period about feedback received, emotional responses to that feedback, and attempts to regulate those emotional responses.