How does Social Anxiety Disorder differ from performance-only social anxiety?

• A. Social Anxiety Disorder involves fear in most social situations across contexts.
• B. Performance-only involves most social situations.
• C. Social Anxiety Disorder only occurs during adolescence.
• D. Performance-only is unrelated to anxiety.

Answer: (A)

The key idea here is how widespread the fear is across social life. Social Anxiety Disorder involves fear or anxiety in most social situations across different settings, not just in one type of scenario. People with this pattern worry about being judged, embarrassed, or scrutinized in a wide range of interactions—talking with coworkers, meeting new people, eating in front of others, participating in class—and this can lead to avoidance across various contexts.

In contrast, a performance-only presentation means the fear is limited to situations where one is being observed or judged for a performance, such as public speaking or giving a presentation. Outside those performance contexts, everyday social interactions may not provoke significant anxiety. It’s also not true that this only starts in adolescence; Social Anxiety Disorder can begin in adolescence or adulthood, and the performance-only form is still an anxiety-related condition, just more narrowly scoped.

So the defining difference is the breadth of social situations that trigger anxiety: pervasive across contexts in Social Anxiety Disorder versus limited to performance settings in the performance-only variant.