Social Motivation Differentiates Social Anxiety and Depression: A Daily Diary Study.

Because social anxiety and depression commonly co-occur, it can be challenging to disentangle the emotional and motivational features of these conditions in everyday life contexts. In this daily diary study, we sought to understand the interplay between daily social anxiety and depression symptoms and emotion and motivation, determining whether daily symptoms are independently linked with positive affect, negative affect, and social motivation (desire to approach or to withdraw from others). Community-dwelling adults (N = 269) with a wide range of social anxiety and depression symptoms completed daily assessments for 14 consecutive days (a total of 2,986 daily surveys). Within-person analyses found that increases in social anxiety and depression symptoms were uniquely associated with elevated negative affect; only increases in depression symptoms were associated with diminished positive affect. Increases in social anxiety symptoms were associated with an elevated desire to approach others but not a desire to withdraw from others. By contrast, increases in depression symptoms were associated with a diminished desire to approach others and an elevated desire to withdraw from others. Desire for social connection may distinguish social anxiety from depression. Examining patterns of daily social motivation may enhance clinicians' ability to differentiate the difficulties that arise from social anxiety from those that arise from depression.

Stress generation in social anxiety and depression: A two-study community assessment.

BACKGROUND: Stress generation theory suggests that people engage in certain behaviors that causally generate "dependent" stressful life events. Stress generation has primarily been studied in the context of depression with limited consideration of anxiety. People with social anxiety exhibit maladaptive social and regulatory behaviors that may uniquely generate stress. METHOD: Across two studies, we examined if people with elevated social anxiety experienced more dependent stressful life events than those lower in social anxiety. On an exploratory basis, we examined differences in perceived intensity, chronicity, and self-blame of stressful life events. As a conservative test, we examined whether observed relationships held after covarying depression symptoms. Community adults (Ns = 303; 87) completed semi-structured interviews about recent stressful life events. RESULTS: Participants with higher social anxiety symptoms (Study 1) and social anxiety disorder (SAD; Study 2) reported more dependent stressful life events than those with lower social anxiety. In Study 2, healthy controls rated dependent events as less impactful than independent events; those with SAD rated dependent and independent events as equally impactful. Regardless of social anxiety symptoms, participants placed greater blame on themselves for the occurrence of dependent than independent events. LIMITATIONS: Life events interviews are retrospective and preclude conclusions about short-term changes. Mechanisms of stress generation were not assessed. CONCLUSIONS: Results provide initial evidence for the role of stress generation in social anxiety that may be distinct from depression. Implications for assessing and treating unique and shared features of affective disorders are discussed.