Survey of Heterosexual Interactions (SHI)

1. Abstract

The Survey of Heterosexual Interactions (SHI) is a specialized psychometric assessment instrument developed in the mid-1970s by clinical psychologists Craig T. Twentyman and Richard M. McFall to evaluate self-reported competence, social avoidance, and performance expectations in heterosocial situations among males. Emerging from the behavioral assessment paradigm, the SHI addresses a prevalent clinical issue: severe dating anxiety, social inhibition, and skills deficits in initiating and maintaining interactions with female peers. The instrument comprises 20 situationally specific vignette items depicting common interpersonal scenarios encountered by young adults (e.g., initiating telephone calls for dates, starting conversations with unfamiliar peers in public settings, and handling awkward or ambiguous interpersonal moments). Respondents evaluate their behavioral likelihood and capability on a 7-point Likert-type scale, where lower scores indicate severe inhibition and perceived inability to perform, and higher scores signify robust situational competence and social self-efficacy.

Extensive psychometric investigations conducted across multiple college and clinical cohorts demonstrate that the SHI possesses exceptional internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically exceeding .90, and 6- to 9-week test-retest reliability correlations ranging from .85 to .90. Factor-analytic evaluations consistently confirm a dominant, robust unidimensional construct representing heterosocial competence, alongside secondary situational facets such as direct telephone requests, public stranger approaches, and coping with peer audience scrutiny. The tool has demonstrated notable construct, convergent, and criterion-related predictive validity, exhibiting significant correlations with the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SADS), the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE), in vivo behavioral role-play evaluations, and objective physiological indices of anxiety during actual interactions with confederates. The SHI has served as a foundational instrument in behavior modification, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), and social skills training (SST) research for evaluating baseline deficits and measuring intervention outcomes.

2. Keywords

Survey of Heterosexual Interactions, SHI, heterosocial competence, dating anxiety, social skills training, behavioral assessment, social avoidance, social phobia, heterosocial anxiety, Richard M. McFall, Craig T. Twentyman, psychometrics

3. Authors

The Survey of Heterosexual Interactions was formulated and psychometrically validated through a series of empirical investigations conducted primarily by Craig T. Twentyman and Richard M. McFall, with later contributions from Terry Boland.

• Richard M. McFall, Ph.D.: A preeminent clinical psychologist and emeritus professor at Indiana University Bloomington (formerly at the University of Wisconsin–Madison). McFall is widely celebrated for his pioneering contributions to the behavioral-analytic model of social skills assessment, the development of clinical science training paradigms, and empirical formulations of interpersonal competence. His seminal conceptual paper, “A Review and Reformulation of the Concept of Social Skills” (1982), revolutionized how clinical researchers define and quantify interpersonal functioning.
• Craig T. Twentyman, Ph.D.: Clinical psychologist who conducted early research on social anxiety, shy males, and heterosocial performance deficits at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Rochester. Twentyman’s programmatic research focused on translating behavioral and social learning models into concrete, manualized intervention strategies for socially inhibited individuals, culminating in multi-study experimental evaluations of heterosocial avoidance.
• Terry Boland, Ph.D.: Collaborating behavioral researcher who contributed to large-scale empirical investigations evaluating the dimensional validity, physiological correlates, and treatment responsiveness of the SHI across diverse college male populations.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Survey of Heterosexual Interactions is to provide an objective, situation-specific assessment of heterosocial competence, avoidance behaviors, and perceived self-efficacy among males who experience significant difficulty interacting with females. During the 1970s, clinical psychologists recognized that general measures of trait anxiety or broad social anxiety (such as the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale) lacked the behavioral specificity required to design and evaluate targeted clinical interventions. Young adult males presenting with dating anxiety frequently displayed distinct behavioral profiles: some possessed adequate cognitive knowledge of social etiquette but were paralyzed by conditioned autonomic arousal and catastrophic cognitive appraisals, whereas others suffered from genuine behavioral repertoire deficiencies (i.e., social skills deficits).

The SHI was purposefully constructed to fulfill three interconnected clinical and research functions:

• Diagnostic Screening and Identification: The instrument facilitates the rapid identification of individuals who experience clinically meaningful levels of heterosocial inhibition. By evaluating an individual’s self-predicted behavior across diverse, realistic interpersonal vignettes, clinicians can distinguish individuals with generalized social avoidance from those whose anxiety is circumscribed to romantic or heterosocial initiations.
• Targeting Behavioral Deficits in Intervention Design: Rather than producing a generic anxiety index, the SHI’s situationally grounded items enable therapists to pinpoint specific behavioral triggers. For example, a respondent may demonstrate adequate competence in structured or casual acquaintance situations (e.g., Item 10: inviting a classmate to have a drink at the library) while experiencing profound behavioral paralysis in scenarios involving audience scrutiny or cold telephone initiations (e.g., Item 1: calling a woman while a roommate is present; Item 7: approaching a woman standing within a group of four peers). This granularity directly informs behavioral rehearsal, role-play hierarchies, and in vivo exposure tasks in social skills training.
• Empirical Outcome Measurement: In controlled treatment-outcome studies, the SHI serves as a highly sensitive pre-treatment, post-treatment, and follow-up index. Because the response format emphasizes the subjective probability of successfully executing a communicative act across repeated opportunities (“in every case” vs. “in some cases” vs. “unable”), the scale reliably captures clinical shifts resulting from cognitive restructuring, videotaped modeling, behavioral rehearsal, and assertiveness training.

5. Psychological Construct

The underlying psychological construct measured by the SHI is heterosocial competence—defined operationally as the capacity to effectively initiate, engage in, and sustain social interactions with opposite-sex peers in interpersonal contexts characterized by potential evaluation, ambiguity, or rejection. Heterosocial competence is not conceived as an immutable personality trait; rather, it represents a composite of social cognitive decision-making, behavioral execution skills, and the regulation of conditioned avoidance responses.

The construct encompasses several critical behavioral and cognitive-affective dimensions:

Initiation Under Low Structure and Ambiguity

A substantial portion of the SHI evaluates the respondent’s willingness and perceived ability to introduce himself to a stranger when social norms provide minimal explicit structure. In daily life, individuals frequently encounter opportunities where starting a conversation is socially permissible but not required, such as seeing an attractive peer alone at a dance (Item 2), seated nearby in a cafeteria (Item 18), or at a drugstore counter (Item 8). In these scenarios, low-competent or socially anxious individuals exhibit what McFall termed “initiation failure,” characterized by elevated physiological arousal, ruminative self-monitoring, catastrophic predictions of rejection, and motoric freezing.

Interpersonal Action in the Presence of Evaluative Audiences

Social anxiety is heavily modulated by the presence of third-party observers. The SHI systematically varies contextual pressure by embedding evaluative audiences into several vignettes. For example, Item 1 introduces a roommate who enters the room and reads a magazine while the respondent attempts to place a phone call; Item 6 features a crowded public bus where an unfamiliar male sits adjacent to the target peer; and Item 7 requires an approach toward a woman embedded within a group of four peers. In these situations, the psychological construct taps into heightened vulnerability to social embarrassment, fear of public failure, and evaluation apprehension, which exponentially elevate the perceived cost of behavioral action.

Transitions from Casual Acquaintance to Explicit Dating Contexts

Navigating the boundary between casual, platonic engagement and explicit romantic interest represents a key developmental task for emerging adults. Several SHI vignettes capture this transitional challenge, such as following up on a blind-date referral provided by a mutual friend (Item 9) or attempting to re-engage an individual after an initial date where the outcome remained ambiguous (Item 19). These items assess the respondent’s capacity to tolerate ambiguity, navigate social risk, and assert interpersonal intentions without requiring absolute certainty of approval.

Spontaneous Opportunism and Social Serendipity

Effective social interactants consistently capitalize on unplanned social openings. The SHI measures this flexibility through scenarios such as taking advantage of a brief shared task (Item 13: banquet seating), seizing an unexpected introduction when an acquaintance momentarily leaves the room (Item 14), or initiating contact with new neighbors moving into an apartment complex (Item 16). Socially avoidant individuals view these ambiguous events as threats to be avoided, whereas socially competent individuals treat them as low-stakes conversational opportunities.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the Survey of Heterosexual Interactions is rooted in the convergence of behavioral assessment, social learning theory, and early cognitive-behavioral paradigms of social anxiety. During its development, clinical psychology was undergoing a major shift from psychoanalytic formulations toward empirical, situationally determined models of behavior.

The Behavioral-Analytic Model of Social Competence

The primary theoretical foundation of the SHI is the behavioral-analytic model developed by Goldfried and D’Zurilla (1969) and expanded by Richard M. McFall (1975, 1982). McFall challenged the traditional psychometric assumption that social competence constitutes a static, global personality disposition. Instead, he conceptualized competence as an evaluative summary label applied to an individual’s performance across a defined universe of specific situational challenges. According to this framework, an individual’s response to an environmental demand must be evaluated according to its functional utility in maximizing positive consequences and minimizing negative outcomes over time.

Under McFall’s two-tier competence model, interpersonal functioning requires two distinct components:

1. Social Skills: The specific behavioral component processes—including decoding situational cues, selecting appropriate goals, generating behavioral options, executing verbal and nonverbal behaviors, and monitoring feedback—necessary to produce competent performances.
2. Competence: The overall social judgment rendered by external evaluators (or the self) regarding the adequacy of the performed behavior within that specific context.

The SHI was designed to assess the individual’s self-appraised behavioral capability across an ecologically valid sample of critical situational challenges identified empirically through behavioral analyses of college male dating interactions.

Social Learning and Self-Efficacy Theory

The instrument also aligns directly with Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory, particularly the concept of perceived self-efficacy. Bandura posited that individuals’ beliefs concerning their capability to organize and execute courses of action determine their choice of behavioral activities, the amount of effort they will expend, and their persistence in the face of obstacles. When an individual anticipates an inability to successfully initiate a conversation (“unable in every case”), this low self-efficacy expectation generates severe anticipatory anxiety, autonomic arousal, and active avoidance behavior. The SHI items capture subjective efficacy expectations across varying levels of behavioral challenge, predicting actual performance in live social encounters.

Conditioned Anxiety and Cognitive Distortion Models

From a classical and operant conditioning standpoint, heterosocial avoidance represents an active avoidance response maintained by negative reinforcement: avoiding an approach behavior immediately eliminates the acute discomfort of anticipatory autonomic arousal. Simultaneously, cognitive models of social phobia (e.g., Beck, Clark, & Wells) emphasize that socially anxious individuals hold excessively high standards for social performance, hyper-focus on internal sensations of arousal, and engage in catastrophic misinterpretations of benign social feedback. The SHI operationalizes these theoretical tenets by probing whether situational stressors immediately suppress the respondent’s behavioral output.

7. Validity

The Survey of Heterosexual Interactions has undergone extensive empirical validation, demonstrating strong construct, criterion-related, convergent, and discriminant validity across clinical and experimental investigations.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity for the SHI was established by evaluating its associations with validated measures of generalized social anxiety, fear of negative evaluation, and dating history. In the initial validation cohorts described by Twentyman and McFall (1975) and subsequent replications (Twentyman, Boland, & McFall, 1981), SHI total scores correlated strongly and inversely with established social anxiety scales:

• Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SADS): Pearson correlation coefficients regularly range from r = -.60 to -.75, confirming that lower self-reported heterosocial competence is intimately linked to pervasive social avoidance and subjective distress in interpersonal contexts.
• Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE): Significant negative correlations (typically r = -.45 to -.62) indicate that individuals with low SHI scores experience heightened evaluation apprehension and hyper-vigilance toward perceived interpersonal disapproval.
• Objective Dating Frequency: The SHI correlates positively and significantly with real-world social behavior, including the number of casual and formal dates reported over preceding 6-month intervals (r values typically ranging between .40 and .58).

Criterion and Behavioral Predictive Validity

A hallmark of the behavioral assessment tradition is demonstrating that paper-and-pencil self-report instruments directly predict real-time motoric and physiological behavior. The SHI demonstrates exceptional predictive validity across multiple laboratory paradigms:

• In Vivo Interaction with Female Confederates: In the classic validation studies by Twentyman and McFall (1975), male undergraduates who scored in the lowest quartile of the SHI (shy/avoidant males) were compared against individuals scoring in the upper quartile (confident males) during structured and unstructured interactions with unfamiliar female confederates. Low-SHI males demonstrated significantly longer latencies to initiate speech, spoke for a significantly smaller percentage of total interaction time, engaged in less eye contact, and displayed marked deficits in conversational fluency.
• Behavioral Telephone Challenge: When instructed to make actual telephone calls to female peers to request casual social outings, low-SHI participants exhibited high rates of behavioral refusal, prolonged pre-call hesitation latencies, and elevated self-reported subjective units of distress (SUDS).
• Physiological Reactivity: Empirical studies monitoring autonomic arousal during anticipatory waiting periods and subsequent face-to-face interactions demonstrated that low-SHI scores correlate with significantly higher heart-rate acceleration and elevated skin conductance levels compared to high-SHI counterparts.

Discriminant Validity

The SHI demonstrates adequate discriminant validity by failing to correlate significantly with variables theoretically unrelated to social competence, such as general intelligence (IQ), academic grade point average (GPA), and non-social trait dimensions such as locus of control or mechanical aptitude (correlations generally nonsignificant, with |r| < .15).

8. Reliability

The psychometric reliability of the SHI has been thoroughly evaluated across multiple independent university and clinical samples, consistently meeting established psychometric standards for both research screening and individual clinical assessment.

Internal Consistency

Internal consistency estimates reflect high degree of item homogeneity and conceptual coherence:

• Cronbach’s Alpha: In initial investigations by Twentyman and McFall (1975), the full 20-item instrument yielded an internal consistency coefficient of α = .91. Subsequent large-scale investigations involving non-clinical and clinically referred male undergraduates (Twentyman, Boland, & McFall, 1981; Fischer & Corcoran, 2007) have replicated these figures, reporting alpha values ranging from .88 to .94.
• Split-Half Reliability: Spearman-Brown corrected split-half coefficients have consistently exceeded r = .89, indicating that the situational variations embedded across odd and even items maintain equivalent measurement properties.
• Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations across the 20 vignettes typically range from .42 to .74, confirming that every scenario contributes meaningful variance to the central construct of heterosocial initiation capability.

Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability)

Because the SHI assesses behavioral expectations across realistic situational contexts, it demonstrates robust temporal stability in the absence of targeted psychological intervention:

• Across a two-week test-retest interval, untreated control cohorts demonstrated stability coefficients of r = .89 to .92.
• Over extended periods spanning six to nine weeks, test-retest reliability remained robust at r = .83 to .87, demonstrating that baseline heterosocial avoidance does not spontaneously remit without active behavioral or environmental intervention.
• Critically, despite this high baseline stability, the instrument demonstrates high sensitivity to treatment change, showing large, statistically significant pre-to-post gains following behavioral skills training and cognitive interventions (effect sizes frequently exceeding Cohen’s d = 1.0).

9. Factor Analysis

A series of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses have examined the underlying structural composition of the 20-item SHI to determine whether the scale reflects a strictly unidimensional construct or encompasses distinct situational sub-dimensions.

Unidimensional Structure and the General Competence Factor

Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) employing principal components analysis with varimax and oblimin rotations typically demonstrate that the SHI is predominantly characterized by a large first general factor. In the landmark factor analytic studies reported by Twentyman, Boland, and McFall (1981):

• The primary unrotated general factor accounted for approximately 42% to 48% of the total variance across items.
• All 20 items loaded significantly onto this first component, with primary loadings ranging from .45 to .78.
• These findings provide strong empirical justification for utilizing a single, composite summary score (the total sum of all 20 items) in clinical assessments and empirical research protocols.

Situational Multi-Factor Solutions

When researchers extract multi-factor solutions to examine the granular topography of heterosocial challenges, three to four correlated situational factors consistently emerge, accounting for an additional 15% to 20% of the total variance:

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Survey of Heterosexual Interactions is a self-administered, 20-item behavioral self-report inventory designed for adult and adolescent males. Below are the operational specifications of the measurement tool:

• Construct Assessed: Heterosocial competence, social avoidance, and situation-specific dating anxiety.
• Target Population: Adolescent and adult males (originally validated on college-age populations aged 18–25; adaptable to broader adult cohorts experiencing interpersonal shyness).
• Administration Time: Approximately 8 to 12 minutes.
• Format: Pen-and-paper or digital administration consisting of 20 realistic situational vignettes describing varied interpersonal dilemmas.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert-type response format anchored to behavioral likelihood and perceived capability:
  • 1: Completely unable to perform the action in every case (severe behavioral inhibition / paralysis).
  • 2, 3, 4: Able to perform the action in some cases (intermediate capability depending on fluctuations in mood, perceived receptivity, or distress).
  • 5, 6, 7: Able to perform the action in every case (consistently competent behavioral execution).

  (Note: Several individual vignettes feature customized behavioral anchor descriptions corresponding to the specific context—e.g., passing sugar, asking to sit at a cafeteria table, or walking by without speaking—while retaining the underlying 1 to 7 continuum).

• Scoring Method:
  • All 20 items are scored in a direct, positive direction where higher numerical ratings represent greater behavioral competence and lower social avoidance.
  • Total Score Range: 20 to 140 points.
  • Score Interpretation:
    • 20 – 65: Severe heterosocial inhibition / extreme dating avoidance. Individuals in this range typically exhibit profound social anxiety, extensive behavioral avoidance, and skills acquisition or performance deficits warranting targeted clinical intervention.
    • 66 – 95: Moderate heterosocial anxiety. Individuals experience significant hesitation, particularly in high-threat evaluative situations (e.g., group approaches or cold phone calls), but maintain baseline capability in structured contexts.
    • 96 – 140: High heterosocial competence. Reflects normative to superior interpersonal confidence, high perceived self-efficacy, and minimal avoidance across diverse social settings.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Survey of Heterosexual Interactions was originally developed in 1975 by Craig T. Twentyman and Richard M. McFall, with comprehensive multi-study psychometric data published in 1981. As an assessment developed within academic research grants and published in peer-reviewed journals (the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology and Behavior Modification), the instrument entered widespread academic use as a public-domain clinical research tool.

The complete scale, scoring instructions, and psychometric profiles were subsequently republished in major clinical sourcebooks, notably Joel Fischer and Kevin J. Corcoran’s Measures for Clinical Practice and Research: A Sourcebook (Oxford University Press). The SHI is available without licensing fees or commercial royalties for non-commercial research, university education, and clinical practice. Researchers and practitioners utilizing the instrument are expected to cite the foundational validation articles (Twentyman & McFall, 1975; Twentyman, Boland, & McFall, 1981) in all subsequent publications and scholarly reports.

12. References

The following peer-reviewed articles and reference works provide foundational empirical validation and psychometric documentation for the Survey of Heterosexual Interactions:

• Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
• Fischer, J., & Corcoran, K. J. (2007). Measures for Clinical Practice and Research: A Sourcebook (4th ed., Vol. 1). Oxford University Press, pp. 193–197.
• Goldfried, M. R., & D’Zurilla, T. J. (1969). A behavioral-analytic model for assessing competence. In C. D. Spielberger (Ed.), Current Topics in Clinical and Community Psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 151–196). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-4832-5636-8.50010-0
• McFall, R. M. (1982). A review and reformulation of the concept of social skills. Behavioral Assessment, 4(1), 1–33.
• Twentyman, C. T., Boland, T., & McFall, R. M. (1981). Heterosocial avoidance in college males: Four studies. Behavior Modification, 5(4), 523–552. https://doi.org/10.1177/014544558154005
• Twentyman, C. T., & McFall, R. M. (1975). Behavioral training of social skills in shy males. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43(3), 384–395. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076727
• Watson, D., & Friend, R. (1969). Measurement of social-evaluative anxiety. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 33(4), 448–457. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0027806

13. Items of the Scale