A Simple Way To Boost Social Confidence

Posted on April 27, 2017

Known as The Acceptance Prophecy, we sometimes get what we expect in life. For instance, when we expect ourselves to like someone, for some reason, they tend to like us as well. For insecure or socially anxious individuals, it becomes the rejection prophecy. When we feel nervous about meeting new people, such nervousness is often manifested as nervous behaviour which will lead to rejection.

To turn the rejection prophecy back into the acceptance prophecy, there is a simple exercise for one to try out that helps boost relational security. Firstly, Stinson et. al measured the relational security of people by asking people how much they agree with statements like “My partner loves and accepts me unconditionally.”

Afterwards, these people were asked to rank a list of values in order of importance and write a couple of paragraphs to explain why their top-ranked item was so important. The results showed that such simple task can boost the relational security of insecure individuals and they were seen to be less anxious and more socially confident. These effects were still apparent even after four and eight weeks later. With that being said, it may be worthwhile to try out this task when one feels socially incompetent or anxious!


Category(s):Mental Health in Asia

Source material from Psyblog