Social anxiety has a negative impact on individual’s daily life and disturbs his or hers social adaptation. Socially anxious people are often lonely, have difficulties in meeting new people and communicating with others. Social anxiety can also be a serious obstacle to professional growth and career development, can interfere with obtaining new skills and knowledge. Severe social anxiety is often associated with a variety of disorders, including depression, alcohol and drug addiction, eating disorders. However, social anxiety has a high prevalence among population. In this regard, it is becoming increasingly important to diagnose social anxiety. Therefore, the aim of our study was the validation of two questionnaires measuring social anxiety “Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale“ and “Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale“. The validation was conducted on 179 people (65 men and 114 women), aged from 18 to 35 years. “Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale“ measures the degree of anxiety and a tendency to avoidance occurring in various social situations: situations of social interaction and performance situations. «Fear of negative evaluation (brief version)» measures the central construct underlying social anxiety - the fear of negative evaluation. As a result of factor analysis of the data it is demonstrated, that “Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale“ has three-factor structure. Single-factor structure of the «Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale» is confirmed. It is shown that all the subscale “Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale“ and “Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (brief version)“ has good internal consistency, high test-retest reliability and external validity.

Social anxiety has a significant negative impact on the individual’s everyday life through handicapping process of social adaptation. In this regard, psychologists observe an increasing amount of research focused on coping-strategies in social phobia. Humorous reactions on stressful events are considered an important and effective coping strategy. The objective of this research is to study the impact of the humour as a coping strategy on different manifestations of social anxiety, as well as the associated feelings of guilt and shame in healthy people and patients with schizophrenia. The study involved 34 patients with schizophrenia and 102 healthy people, aged 18 to 35, males and females. As a research method we used questionnaires such as Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale, Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, Guilt and Shame Proneness Scale. The results showed that patients with schizophrenia are less likely to use humour as a coping strategy than healthy people. The results of one-way ANOVA method demonstrated that humour as a coping strategy is effective in some, but not all, aspects of social anxiety. The results of two-way ANOVA method showed that humour as a coping strategy could be effective to cope with shame and guilt, but at low level of social anxiety. At high level of social anxiety humour could not only be ineffective to cope with shame and guilt, but also have a negative influence on these emotions. In healthy males with low level of social anxiety humour helps to cope with withdrawal actions in shame. In males with schizophrenia and low levels of social anxiety humour reduces repair actions in guilt. These results indicate heterogenic influence of humour over social anxiety, shame and guilt, and can be used for diagnostic purposes and for psychocorrection.