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Video Feedback

Description of the Strategy

Ever since videotaping became financially feasible, psychologists have been interested in its potential use. Broadly speaking, video feedback describes any procedure involving showing a participant a videotape of himself or herself in order to provide information from an objective viewpoint. In the 1960s and 1970s, when the technique was first widely researched, applications varied widely, although the explicit or implicit goal of most efforts was to give participants a more realistic sense of their own appearance or behavior. This goal may be understood in a variety of theoretical contexts. A strict behavioral interpretation might hold that viewing the videotape is a form of exposure to a feared but actually harmless stimulus. Alternatively, watching the videotape might be construed as a form of punishment, reinforcement, or general feedback about the behaviors displayed. A more cognitivebehavioral interpretation might hold that video feedback challenges and changes distorted beliefs that have previously given rise to unnecessary distress, dysfunctional behavior, or both.

More recent uses of video feedback have focused primarily on social anxiety, speech anxiety, and, by extension, social phobia. In these contexts, video feedback is thought of as a means to challenge the distorted self-perceptions of socially anxious people who perform adequately despite their beliefs to the contrary. Video feedback has also been suggested as a means of convincing people with social anxiety that their safety behaviors (e.g., holding arms rigid to avoid shaking) actually look worse than the visible symptom that is being avoided. Essentially, then, this use of the technique retains the goal of more realistic self-perception.

Research Basis

Early research on video feedback found that results differed by context and content of the videotapes. It was suggested that video feedback primarily produces a more accurate self-concept, a conclusion supported empirically and even by those studies that showed a detrimental impact of video feedback on some measures (e.g., self-esteem). As noted by reviewers of this literature, gaining a more realistic self-concept is not necessarily synonymous with immediate elevation in self-esteem, but can still be construed as a positive step if the more realistic self-concept leads to more adaptive behavior.

Although video feedback is reputed to be a strong intervention for social phobia, it has thus far been investigated only in regard to socially anxious participants giving speeches. In this context, video feedback has been shown to be more effective when preceded by a form of cognitive preparation in which participants imagine their speeches in detail and watch the videotape with a detached attitude. There is evidence that when used with the cognitive preparation, the change in self-perception caused by video feedback can last for at least 2 weeks. Although video feedback should theoretically decrease anxiety and avoidance behavior in people with social phobia, research has yet to demonstrate such effects.

Relevant Target Populations and Exceptions

As described above, the bulk of recent evidence for the effects of video feedback is in regard to social anxiety. More specifically, people who believe they perform inadequately despite the fact that they possess reasonable social skills have the most to gain from video feedback, at least in terms of improved self-perception. People who do not have reasonable social skills may also benefit from video feedback but appear more likely to do so if it is paired with social skills training.

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