Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by and intense and constant fear of social situations. The goal of this work is to identify, in indexed publications, psychometric and empirical studies on the evaluation of negative thoughts and safety behaviors associated with SAD. Twenty-two articles were located and grouped into two sets considering the type of procedure used. In the first set, studies investigated the psychometric properties of instruments that evaluate cognition and SAD, out of which four studies addressed instruments that had been previously evaluated, and two others evaluated instruments specifically proposed for measuring safety behavior and negative thoughts. The studies in the second set used simulations of verbal performance situations to investigate the cognitive aspects associated with anxiety. These studies confirmed the association of negative self-image, negative thoughts, and safety behaviors with social anxiety. The analysis of the studies reveals that identifying avoidance behaviors can be useful for implementing intervention procedures.
social anxiety; social phobia; cognition; safety behavior; negative thoughts