The core of social phobia is a desire to make a good impression to others and a lack of confidence about one’s ability to do so. People who suffer social phobia present negative self-statements, negative thoughts about the impression they make in others and biases in the evaluation of their performance. Furthermore, cognitive processing of information could be determined by deeper cognitive structures such as schemas.

To study the relationships between maladaptive schemas, automatic thoughts and social anxiety in adolescents.

To assess the relationship between maladaptive schemas and social anxiety and to test whether this relationship was mediated by automatic thoughts related to social anxiety.

A total of 1350 adolescents aged between 13 and 18 took part in this longitudinal study. They filled in questionnaires about schemas (Schema Questionnaire; Young, 1990), thoughts related to social anxiety (Social Cognitions Questionnaire; Stopa, Wells, & Clark, 1993) social anxiety symptoms (Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents; Olivares et al., 2005) at Time 1 and six months later (Time 2).

Results showed that abuse, defectiveness, subjugation, and sociotropy schemas predicted social anxiety. This model explained 22% of the variance. Automatic thoughts related to social anxiety partially explained the relationships between defectiveness, subjugation and sociotropy schemas and symptoms. The abuse schema directly predicted social anxiety symptoms.

Some maladaptive schemas predict automatic thoughts which in turn predict social anxiety. These results have important implications for intervention with adolescents who suffer social anxiety.