Personal meaning organisations and social phobia symptoms: A cognitive survey on possible connections
Nicola Marsigli, Rosita Giunti, Martina Rosadoni
Personal meaning organisation type psychogenic eating disorders seem to share a number of
psychological manifestations with social phobia, e.g. hypersensitivity to judgment, perfectionism
and low self-esteem. The aim of this study is to explore the possible connections between the two
frameworks. The participants (144 psychotherapy trainees from different schools, 79.2% female;
average age M = 30.4; d.s. = 3.06), were asked to fill in two types of self-report questionnaires: Mini
Questionario sull’Organizzazione Personale (Nardi et al., 2012), in order to analyse the four different
personal meaning organisations, and the Liebowitz Social, Phobia Scale (Liebowitz, 1987), which
measures the intensity of social phobia symptoms (LSPS). Results indicate that, within the four
organisations of personal meaning, psychogenic eating disorder organisation is often associated to
symptoms of social phobia, especially the level of anxiety experienced in interpersonal performance
contexts as well as in social avoidance; on the contrary, it doesn’t seem related to performance
avoidance. The similarity found between these two frameworks may lead to an integration of both a
cognitive post-rational model and cognitive-behavioural techniques in the clinical practice.
Keywords
Personal meaning organisations, Social anxiety, Performance anxiety, Avoidance,
Fear of judgment.
