ArticleJournal of anxiety disorders2021
Are people with social anxiety disorder happier alone?
Article in Journal of anxiety disorders, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- Social isolation and anxiety disorders during COVID-19: a systematic review.Frontiers in public health · 2025Pooled it
- Studies of Social Anxiety Using Ambulatory Assessment: Systematic Review.JMIR mental health · 2024Pooled it
- The Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Social Anxiety: A Systematic Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Pooled it
- A quasi-randomised pilot study on the efficacy and perceived usefulness of adding chemosignals to mindfulness practice for women with social anxiety.Scientific reports · 2025Trial
- Reward Deficits in Co-Occurring Social Anxiety and Depression: The Roles of Anhedonia, Boredom, Loneliness, and COVID-19 Social Restriction.Journal of clinical psychology · 2026Article
- Dissociated in Anticipation, Common in Feedback: Neuroelectrophysiological Mechanisms of Social-Motivational Processing in Bivalent Evaluation Fears.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- Differences in cognitive control under negative emotion priming among college students with varying emotional regulation abilities.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Electroencephalography-based psychological and physiological effects of winter virtual forest trail landscapes on youth.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Social media burnout and social anxiety as antecedents of discontinuous usage in the stressor-strain-outcome framework.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Binge eating as an emotional response to the COVID-19 pandemic: a sequential mediation model via the impact of events and social anxiety.Journal of eating disorders · 2024Article
- Social Interactions in Everyday Life of Socially Anxious Adolescents: Effects on Mental State, Anxiety, and Depression.Research on child and adolescent psychopathology · 2024Article
- Article
- Associations between age, social reward processing and social anxiety symptoms.Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Quality contact with other people serves as a reliable mood enhancement strategy. We wondered if the emotional benefits of socializing are present even for those with a psychological disorder defined by social distress and avoidance: social anxiety disorder (SAD). We conducted two ecological momentary assessment (EMA) studies and analyzed 7243 total surveys. In both studies, community adults diagnosed with SAD and healthy controls received five surveys each day for 2 weeks. Consistent with research on positivity deficits in SAD, between-person analyses in both studies suggest that, on average, participants with SAD reported lower positive and higher negative affect in social and non-social situations than healthy controls. Within-person analyses, however, revealed that in both studies participants with SAD and healthy controls reported higher positive affect when with others than when alone; no differences were found for negative affect for those with SAD. The difference in positive affect between social and nonsocial situations was smaller for participants with SAD in Study 1, suggesting that people with SAD may experience diminished reward responding when socializing. Our results suggest that even those with a mental illness defined by interpersonal distress can and do derive positive emotions from social interactions.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.