Furthermore, self-efficacy, social control and dysfunctional strategies for coping produced significant multivariate effects on all social anxiety variables seen together (SIAS, SPS, SI), suggesting that they affect the amounts of anxiety experienced in social performance situations as well as the affective, cognitive and physiological symptoms from social anxiety, and the experienced amounts of social impairment from anxiety. This may be further proof that social anxiety ought to be represented by a continuum. Finally, note that a number of the study participants recruited from local associations for individuals with social phobia scored below the cutoff scores for SIA and/or SPS, which Rapee and Spence (2004) have suggested is a strong sign that social anxiety–social phobia should be considered as a continuum. Our findings suggest that one does not necessarily need to fulfill diagnostic criteria for social phobia to experience amounts of social anxiety that are restricting and handicapping. Low self-efficacy and/or specific coping habits appear to have a decisive role for an individual’s experience of social anxiety as handicapping, irrespective of whether the individual reports high or low levels of social anxiety.