“Don't put me down but don't be too nice to me either”: fear of positive vs. negative evaluation and responses to positive vs. negative social-evaluative films.

•Fear of negative evaluation (FNE) is a core feature of social anxiety.•Fear of positive evaluation (FPE) might be a unique aspect of social anxiety.•We elicited evaluative responses through brief films of positive/negative sentences.•FNE predicted ratings to negative, FPE ratings to positive films.•FPE predicted unique variance and could complement models of social anxiety.