The effect of an empowered mindset on social anxiety in negotiations

Abstract

Socially anxious individuals both struggle to progress in the workplace, and do not benefit from "power" (over others) interventions (as those with low levels of social anxiety do). This research attempted to develop an alternate, empowerment-based intervention that can reinforce the self-advocacy behaviour of those high on social anxiety (SA). An experimental design was used in this study. Participants (n=112) were placed into dyads to complete a negotiation task. Prior to the negotiation, dyads were primed with a randomly assigned empowerment, power, or neutral essay-writing prime. As expected, the results demonstrated that for individuals with higher SA, a power mindset decreased self-advocating behaviour. An empowerment mindset only helped to decrease avoiding behaviours for higher SA individuals. Overall, the power mindset was helpful for lower SA individuals. The findings demonstrated that a stronger empowerment prime may be needed for those with higher SA.