Research on Social Anxiety
Social anxiety can look different from person to person. Our research asks what those differences involve—and how understanding them may help us ask better questions about people’s experiences and support needs.
Here you can explore peer-reviewed publications by CSA founder Martin Stork and his collaborators, read accessible summaries, and find links to the articles.
Peer-reviewed publications
These publications include survey studies, a clinical conceptual article, and an opinion article. Each contributes a different kind of evidence or perspective.
To our research participants: Many readers completed surveys shared through CSA. Those responses helped make these studies possible. If you took part, these publications are one of the outcomes of the time you gave to the research. Thank you.
Survey study · Situational patterns
Latent Profiles of Social Anxiety Across Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale Domains
Martin Stork, Juan Pablo Román-Calderón, and Mariantonia Lemos
Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment · 2026
Are differences in social anxiety mainly about overall severity, or also about which situations feel difficult? Using survey data from 808 adults, this study examined fear and avoidance across different kinds of social situations. The main analysis included 805 participants and identified four patterns, reflecting both overall symptom burden and relative differences involving interaction and performance versus eating and drinking in public.
How to interpret it: The precise number of profiles depended on the analysis. An analysis restricted to participants with complete data favored two profiles. The findings are therefore a provisional description of variation, rather than evidence for four established clinical types.
Read the published article free through Springer SharedIt, or access the accepted manuscript below.
Survey study · Psychological profiles
Process-Informed Psychological Profiles in Social Anxiety: A Multidimensional Person-Centered Analysis
Martin Stork, Miguel M. Gonçalves, and João Tiago Oliveira
Cognitive Therapy and Research · 2026
This study examined 412 adults with elevated social anxiety symptoms from more than 40 countries. It looked beyond feared situations to consider emotional distress, ways of responding to difficult thoughts and feelings, motivation, and personality. Four provisional profiles emerged, suggesting that people with social anxiety may differ in broader psychological characteristics as well as symptom severity.
How to interpret it: Support for the profiles was uneven, with some patterns more clearly separated than others. The findings require independent replication and do not yet provide a validated way to match people to treatments.
Open-access published article.
Clinical conceptual article · Defensive presentations
Mean to an End: Differentiating Externalizing Presentations of Social Anxiety From Antisocial Personality Disorder
Martin Stork
Practice Innovations · 2026
Social anxiety does not always look like timidity. This article uses an illustrative clinical case to explore how sarcasm, emotional distance, or oppositional behavior may sometimes serve as protection against shame and perceived social threat. It encourages clinicians to examine the purpose and context of behavior when considering different diagnoses.
How to interpret it: This is a conceptual framework, not a test of a treatment or diagnostic tool. Such behaviors can have many explanations; they do not by themselves establish social anxiety or rule out another condition.
The accepted manuscript is freely available. Access to the publisher’s full text may require a subscription.
Opinion article · Identity and belonging
Identity on Trial: Legitimacy-Focused Invalidation and Social Anxiety in Bisexual and Nonbinary People
Daniela Fumega and Martin Stork
Frontiers in Psychology · 2026
What happens when people repeatedly have the legitimacy of their identity questioned? This opinion article considers how that experience may contribute to social anxiety in bisexual and nonbinary people. It connects minority stress with fears about evaluation, rejection, and belonging, and proposes questions for research and clinical understanding.
How to interpret it: The article develops a conceptual perspective; it does not report a new empirical study or establish a causal pathway.
Open-access published article.
Survey study · Anxiety sensitivity and avoidance
Differences in Anxiety Sensitivity and Experiential Avoidance Between Subtypes of Social Anxiety Disorder
Martin Stork, Mariantonia Lemos, and Juan Pablo Román-Calderón
PLOS ONE · 2023
This study examined whether people with different central social fears also differ in anxiety sensitivity—concern about the consequences of anxiety symptoms—and experiential avoidance, or attempts to avoid unwanted internal experiences. It combined questionnaire responses with participants’ descriptions to explore how these processes relate to social anxiety.
How to interpret it: This was a cross-sectional survey: it examined experiences at one point in time and cannot establish what causes what.
Open-access published article.
Why research matters to CSA
Research helps CSA explain social anxiety with greater care: how it varies, what may maintain it, and where important questions remain unanswered. Martin’s publications contribute to that work alongside the wider research literature.
Research focus
- Individual differences: how overall severity, feared situations, and broader psychological characteristics vary between people.
- Psychological processes: how avoidance, emotion regulation, anxiety sensitivity, shame, and related experiences may be involved in social anxiety.
- Everyday life: how social anxiety connects with identity, belonging, relationships, conflict, and alcohol use.
A longer-term question is whether a more detailed understanding of these differences can improve assessment and support. That possibility needs testing; identifying profiles alone does not demonstrate better treatment outcomes.
Learn how social anxiety develops and persists.
Current research directions
Further work explores emotional suppression and anger in social anxiety, alcohol-related harm, and ways to understand individual differences more precisely. Published findings will be added here as they become available.
Research background and collaborations
Martin Stork is the founder and editor of Conquer Social Anxiety. He holds a BA in Psychology from Universidad EAFIT in Colombia and an MSc in Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy for Adults from the University of Minho in Portugal.
His experience includes research fellowship work at the University of Minho’s School of Psychology and CIPsi, its Psychology Research Center, alongside research collaborations with EAFIT University. His work focuses particularly on social anxiety, individual differences, and emotion regulation.
CSA provides a way to bring research questions and findings into accessible public education. It is an educational platform, not a university or clinical research institution. The research presented here is conducted through the relevant academic collaborations and, where applicable, institutional ethics procedures.
Access and transparency
The article links above identify free reading options where available. Open-access links lead to the publisher’s full article. The SharedIt link provides free reading access to the published LSAS study, which was published through the subscription route.
An accepted manuscript is the author’s version after peer review, before the publisher’s final editing and formatting. The two PDFs provided above are accepted manuscripts, not the publisher’s formatted articles. They may differ from the published versions; use the publisher’s article for the definitive publication record.
Research materials and data sharing depend on each study’s ethics approval, participant consent, privacy requirements, and publishing conditions. Consult the individual articles and their supplementary materials for methods, limitations, funding, and disclosure statements.
CSA’s Evidence Standards explain how the site evaluates findings and communicates uncertainty. Inclusion on this page does not mean that a publication validates CSA’s course or demonstrates the effectiveness of its educational resources.
Research participation
CSA occasionally shares opportunities to participate in ethically reviewed research on social anxiety. Study information should explain eligibility, what participation involves, consent, privacy arrangements, and ethical oversight. Participation is always voluntary.
Current recruitment status: No open recruitment opportunity is listed on this page. When a study is recruiting, its details may appear here or be shared with the CSA mailing list.
Academic collaboration
Researchers, clinicians, students, and academic institutions interested in social anxiety research, assessment, cross-cultural work, or public communication of psychological science are welcome to get in touch.
Continue Learning
Learn about Martin’s background and the experience behind CSA.
See how CSA interprets evidence, limitations, and treatment claims.
Understand how CSA’s educational content is created and reviewed.
Explore CSA’s purpose, scope, and educational mission.