Social anxiety and discomfort with friendly giving

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Abstract

Individuals higher in social anxiety report more impaired friendship quality, which past research suggests may stem from constrained warmth. We examined three motivations for constrained warmth in friendships and determined how these motivations related to social anxiety and friendship impairment. To do so, we assessed the psychometric properties of the Favor Scale (FS), which measures an individual's response to friendly giving. Results indicated that the FS has three subscales: negative reactions to favors (NEG), positive reactions to favors (POS), and expectation of tit-for-tat behavior (E-TFT). Structural equation modeling demonstrated that social anxiety related directly to NEG, and indirectly to POS and E-TFT through NEG. POS related directly to friendship quality, indicating that friendships may be impaired in social anxiety disorder due to the cumulative effects of responding negatively to friendly behavior.

Research highlights

▶ The Favor Scale (FS) is a new measure of responses to friendly favors. ▶ Social anxiety related directly to negative reactions to favors. ▶ Social anxiety related indirectly to friendship quality via negative reactions to favors. ▶ Results may help explain friendship impairment in social anxiety disorder.

Section snippets

Three motivations for constrained warmth in friendships

We believe that friendship is an important relationship category in which to study interpersonal problems relating to social anxiety because problematic social anxiety has a special relationship with friendship and peer relationships (Rodebaugh, 2009a, Starr and Davila, 2008). One context for studying lack of warmth related to social anxiety concerns favors between friends. The existing literature would suggest that people with higher social anxiety should display restricted warmth in response

The current study

To test which beliefs about favors among friends are most related to social anxiety, we generated a measure that we hypothesized would assess each type of underlying motivation (lack of positivity, presence of negativity, and expectation of strict reciprocity [i.e., TFT]) in regard to close friends. We tested the psychometric properties of this measure, assessed whether, as hypothesized, its subscales related uniquely to social anxiety, and tested the proposition that these motivations might

Participants

Participants for all studies are described in Table 1. Participants in this study completed a questionnaire packet for course credit, including a variety of measures not reported on in this study, across several semesters of data collection. The Favor Scale was given each semester, but some other scales were only given for certain semesters (see below). Participant social anxiety, as measured by the total score of the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (Mattick & Clarke, 1998), ranged from very

Exploratory factor analyses

Because we did not want our theoretical expectations to dictate the initial factor structure tested, we randomly divided the data into two sets and conducted an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on Set 1 (n = 314); the Kaiser (1970) rule (minimum eigenvalue = 1) suggested a four-factor solution in a principal components analysis conducted separately. In contrast, the scree plot (Cattell, 1966) suggested that a three-factor solution might be more appropriate; additionally, after examining the factor

Participants

Participants from Sample 1 and Sample 2 are described in Table 1.

General discussion

Through these three studies, we sought to explicate the link between higher levels of social anxiety and impaired friendship quality. Research indicates that individuals with higher social anxiety tend toward a low affiliation, low assertion style, but this research has focused on laboratory-based tasks with confederates (e.g., Walters & Hope, 1998). We examined friendship and a common method of displaying warmth in friendship (giving favors) to determine: (a) whether constrained warmth is also

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all of the Washington University in St. Louis Anxiety and Psychotherapy Lab staff members who helped collect these data. Additionally, the authors would like to thank the following individuals for providing helpful feedback on drafts of this manuscript: Cheri A. Levinson, Erik A. Shumaker, Julia K. Langer, Alison Cohn, Jaclyn Fox, Reuben Karchem, and Sima Kaplan.

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