Department of Psychology, Division of Clinical Psychology and Intervention Science, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
Department of Psychology, Division of Clinical Psychology and Epidemiology, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland.
PLoS One. 2021 Apr 14;16(4):e0249765. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249765. eCollection 2021.
Humans need meaningful social interactions, but little is known about the consequences of not having them. We examined meaningful social interactions and the lack thereof in patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) or social phobia (SP) and compared them to a control group (CG). Using event-sampling methodology, we sampled participants' everyday social behavior 6 times per day for 1 week in participants' natural environment. We investigated the quality and the proportion of meaningful social interactions (when they had meaningful social interactions) and degree of wishing for and avoidance of meaningful social interactions (when they did not have meaningful social interactions). Groups differed on the quality and avoidance of meaningful social interactions: Participants with MDD and SP reported perceiving their meaningful social interactions as lower quality (in terms of subjective meaningfulness) than the CG, with SP patients reporting even lower quality than the MDD patients. Further, both MDD and SP patients reported avoiding meaningful social interactions significantly more often than the CG. Although the proportion of meaningful social interactions was similar in all groups, the subjective quality of meaningful social interactions was perceived to be lower in MDD and SP patients. Future research might further identify what variables influenced the reinforcement of the MDD and SP patients so that they engaged in the same number of meaningful social interactions even though the quality of their meaningful social interactions was lower. Increasing awareness of what happens when patients do or do not have meaningful social interactions will help elucidate a potentially exacerbating or maintaining factor of the disorders.
人类需要有意义的社交互动，但对于缺乏社交互动的后果知之甚少。我们研究了被诊断患有重度抑郁症（MDD）或社交恐惧症（SP）的患者的有意义社交互动和缺乏社交互动的情况，并将其与对照组（CG）进行了比较。使用事件采样方法，我们在参与者的自然环境中，每周 6 次、每天 6 次地对参与者的日常社交行为进行采样。我们调查了有意义社交互动的质量和比例（当他们有有意义的社交互动时）以及对有意义社交互动的渴望和回避程度（当他们没有有意义的社交互动时）。各组在有意义社交互动的质量和回避方面存在差异：MDD 和 SP 患者报告称，与 CG 相比，他们感知到的有意义社交互动的质量（就主观意义而言）较低，而 SP 患者的报告甚至比 MDD 患者的质量更低。此外，MDD 和 SP 患者报告称回避有意义的社交互动的频率明显高于 CG。尽管所有组的有意义社交互动比例相似，但 MDD 和 SP 患者的有意义社交互动的主观质量被认为较低。未来的研究可能会进一步确定哪些变量影响了 MDD 和 SP 患者的强化作用，以便他们即使有意义社交互动的质量较低，也能进行相同数量的有意义社交互动。提高对患者是否有有意义社交互动时会发生什么的认识，将有助于阐明这些疾病的一个潜在加重或维持因素。
