People think of "social anxiety disorder" as more serious than "social phobia" - even when they refer to exactly the same thing.
Laura C . Bruce et al did a telephone survey of 806 residents of New York State. They gave people a brief description of someone who's uncomfortable in social situations and often avoids them. The question was: should they seek mental health treatment for this problem?
When the symptoms were labelled as "social anxiety disorder", 83% of people recommended treatment. But when the same description was deemed "social phobia", it dropped to 75%, a statistically significant difference.
OK, that's only an 8% gap. It's a small effect, but then the terminological difference was a small one. "Anxiety disorder" vs "Phobia" is about a subtle a distinction as I can think of actually. Imagine if one of the options had been a label that didn't imply anything pathological - ...
