Social Anxiety and Misinterpretation of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire Describe Subscale

The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire is a widely used measure assessing 5 aspects of mindfulness. The Describe subscale is intended to assess the ability to put one’s inner experience into words for one’s own understanding, but subscale items contain language that may be ambiguous in that regard. The current study investigated whether social anxiety is associated with a tendency to misinterpret Describe items as referring to describing one’s experiences to others rather than oneself. Participants were randomized to receive one of 3 versions of the Describe subscale: the original version or one of two variants orienting participants to describe inner experience for self-communication or interpersonal communication. Social anxiety was negatively associated with Describe scores for the Standard Describe subscale and the interpersonal communication variant, but not for the self-communication variant. Results suggest that high levels of social anxiety are associated with misinterpretation of statements on the Describe subscale as probing for interpersonal communication.