The impact of self-construals on social anxiety: a gender-specific interaction David A. Moscovitch a, * , Stefan G. Hofmann a ,BrettT.Litz b a Department of Psychology, Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, Boston University, 648 Beacon Street, 4th Floor, Boston, MA 02215-2002, USA b Department of Veteran Affairs Boston Health Care System, Boston University School of Medicine and Boston University, USA Received 23 July 2003; received in revised form 22 March 2004; accepted 27 May 2004 Available online 6 July 2004 Abstract Ninety-seven American-born, Caucasian participants completed self-report questionnaires in a study examining the impact of gender, gender role orientation and independent and interdependent self- construals upon social anxiety. Three significant findings emerged: gender membership did not predict social anxiety severity, identification with a traditionally masculine gender role orientation decreased risk forsocialanxiety,andself-construalspredictedlevelsofsocialanxietydifferentiallyinmenandwomen.In men, interdependence and independence predicted levels of social anxiety positively and negatively, respectively, while these patterns of association were reversed in women. Implications of the results are discussed in terms of the role of gender-specific cultural expectations and self-discrepancies in social anx- iety. Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Culture; Gender; Gender role; Independence; Interdependence; Self-construals; Self-discrepancy; Self- schemas; Social anxiety; Social phobia 1. Introduction The ‘‘cognitive self’’ and self-related processes are prominent in contemporary psychological theories of anxiety (Strauman & Segal, 2001). Cognitive models ascribe an essential role to * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-617-353-9610; fax: +1-617-353-9609. E-mail address: dmosco@bu.edu (D.A. Moscovitch). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2004.05.021 Personality and Individual Differences 38 (2005) 659–672 www.elsevier.com/locate/paid