Exploring the links between Social Anxiety and Depression in the Maintenance of Romantic Relationships
Abstract
Social anxiety is characterized by fear and avoidance of social encounters and has recently been associated with a variety of difficulties in romantic relationships. Complicating further investigation of these associations is the high degree of comorbidity between social anxiety and depressive symptomatology, which share several similarities in expression despite disparate underlying causes. The present thesis examines the unique influences of social anxiety and depression on a number of central aspects of relationship functioning and provide the first longitudinal investigation of the impacts of actor and partner social anxiety and depression on relationship quality and functioning. In Study 1, three independent samples drawn from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk participant pool (N = 888) completed measures of social anxiety, depression, relationship satisfaction, perceived social support, commitment, and dyadic trust. Results indicated that both social anxiety and depression were significantly inversely correlated with relationship satisfaction, perceived social support, and dyadic trust. However, hierarchical regression models revealed the variance in relationship satisfaction and dyadic trust to be more appropriately attributed to the influence of depression. Meta-analyses across all three samples revealed similar findings. In Study 2, 122 dyads (n = 244) recruited via Prolific Academic completed a series of measures of social anxiety, relationship satisfaction, perceived social support, and commitment over a 60-day time period. Longitudinal actor-partner analyses revealed partner, but not actor, depression predicted lower future relationship satisfaction and actor but not partner depression to predict lower perceived social support from one’s spouse. Social anxiety was not a significant predictor of change over time in any observed relationship variables. Academic and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.