Clarifying the Behavioral Economics of Social Anxiety Disorder: Effects of Interpersonal Problems and Symptom Severity on Generosity

Feeling stressed and depressed? A three-wave follow-up study of the beneficial effects of voluntary work

While symptoms of stress are a major risk factor in the onset of depressive symptoms and major depression, a better understanding of intervening mechanisms in breaking down this positive association is urgently required. It is within this literature that we investigate (1) how symptoms of stress are associated with depressive symptoms and the onset of major depression, and (2) the buffering effect of hours spent on voluntary work on the stress-depression relationship. Using 3-wave longitudinal data, we estimated a direct and reverse auto-regressive path model. We found both cross-sectional and longitudinal support for the positive association between symptoms of stress and depressive symptoms. Next, we found that individuals who experienced more symptoms of stress at T1, T2, and T3 were 1.64 (95%CI [1.46;1.91]), 1.49 (95%CI [1.24;1.74]), and 1.40 (95%CI [1.21;1.60]) times more likely to be prescribed an anti-depression treatment at T3, respectively. Moreover, we found that the number of hours spent volunteering mitigated the (1) longitudinal-but not cross-sectional-stress-depression relationship, and (2) cross-sectional-but not the longitudinal-association between symptoms of stress at T3 and the likelihood of being prescribed an anti-depression treatment. These results point toward the pivotal role of voluntary work in reducing the development of depressive symptoms and major depression in relation to the experience of symptoms of stress.

Reduced reciprocal giving in social anxiety - Evidence from the Trust Game

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Social anxiety is known to impair interpersonal relationships. These impairments are thought to partly arise from difficulties to engage in affiliative interactions with others, such as sharing favors or reciprocating prosocial acts. Here, we examined whether individuals high compared to low in social anxiety differ in giving towards strangers in an economic game paradigm.

METHODS

One hundred and twenty seven non-clinical participants who had been pre-screened to be either particularly high or low in social anxiety played an incentivized Trust Game to assess trustful and reciprocal giving towards strangers in addition to providing information on real life interpersonal functioning (perceived social support and attachment style).

RESULTS

We found that reciprocal, but not trustful giving, was significantly decreased among highly socially anxious individuals. Both social anxiety and reciprocal giving furthermore showed significant associations with self-reported real life interpersonal functioning.

LIMITATIONS

Participants played the Trust Game with the strategy method; results need replication with a clinical sample.

CONCLUSIONS

Individuals high in social anxiety showed reduced reciprocal, but intact trustful giving, pointing to a constraint in responsiveness. The research may contribute to the development of new treatment and prevention programs to reduce the interpersonal impairments in socially anxious individuals.

The behavioral economics of social anxiety disorder reveal a robust effect for interpersonal traits

Recent evidence suggests that reduced generosity among individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) in behavioral economic tasks may result from constraint in changing behavior according to interpersonal contingencies. That is, people with SAD may be slower to be more generous when the situation warrants. Conversely, more global effects on generosity may be related to interpersonal vindictiveness, a dimension only somewhat related to SAD. A total of 133 participants, 73 with the generalized form of SAD, completed self-report instruments and a behavioral economic task with simulated interpersonal (friend, romantic partner, stranger) interactions. In a separate visit, friends (n = 88) also came to the lab and rated participants on vindictiveness. Interpersonal vindictiveness was associated with reduced initial and overall giving to simulated friends. SAD predicted a lack of increased giving to a simulated friend, and attenuated an increase in giving to simulated known versus unknown players compared to participants without SAD. Friend-reported vindictiveness predicted in the same direction as diagnosis. However, the findings for SAD were less robust than those for vindictiveness. SAD is perhaps weakly related to behavioral constraint in economic tasks that simulate interpersonal interactions, whereas vindictiveness is strongly related to lower overall generosity as well as (via friend report) behavioral constraint. Further study is needed to better characterize the construct of vindictiveness. Our findings dovetail with the suggestion that SAD is related to impairment in the proposed affiliation and attachment system, but further suggest that direct study of that system may be more fruitful than focusing on disorders.