Yang Ye, Zhou Yan, Zhang Huijuan, Kou Hui, Zhao Jia, Tian Jiangli, Guo Cheng
Research Center of Mental Health Education, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China.
CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China.
Int J Clin Health Psychol. 2024 Oct-Dec;24(4):100533. doi: 10.1016/j.ijchp.2024.100533. Epub 2024 Dec 15.
Social anxiety impairs interpersonal relationships, which rely heavily on prosocial behaviors essential for healthy social interactions. The influence of social anxiety on the dynamics of helping others, through stages of prosocial choice stimulus presentation and effort, is not well understood. This study combines two experiments that integrate effort-based decision-making tasks with electroencephalography to distinguish between the choice stimulus presentation and effort phases of prosocial behavior. We examined the prosocial intention and motivation of 36 individuals with high social anxiety (HSAs) and 36 with low social anxiety (LSAs). Participants exerted effort for personal or others' gain, as well as to avoid losses. Participants chose whether to exert effort and then completed a designated number of key presses within a time limit, either to accumulate rewards or to avoid losses for themselves or others. Findings reveal that social anxiety indeed diminishes prosocial intention and effort motivation for gain. Interestingly, once HSAs decide to engage in prosocial efforts for gain, evaluative anxiety helps them reduce prosocial apathy and redirect their attentional resources from threatening stimuli to the task at hand, bringing their level of prosocial effort on par with LSAs. Moreover, HSAs exhibit prosocial apathy toward both gains and losses, with more pronounced prosocial apathy observed in loss tasks. However, evaluative anxiety does not help reduce HSAs' prosocial apathy in loss tasks. Notably, when striving to avoid losses for others, even without evaluative anxiety, HSAs demonstrated prosocial behavior indistinguishable from that of LSAs, suggesting that the goal of avoiding loss promotes prosociality among HSAs. Overall, while social anxiety diminishes individual prosocial behavior, evaluative anxiety and sensitive action goals can mitigate its impact to some extent. These findings are critical for developing strategies to enhance psychological health and promote healthier social interactions.
社交焦虑会损害人际关系，而人际关系很大程度上依赖于健康社交互动所必需的亲社会行为。社交焦虑通过亲社会选择刺激呈现阶段和努力阶段对帮助他人的动态过程产生的影响，目前尚未得到充分理解。本研究结合了两个实验，将基于努力的决策任务与脑电图相结合，以区分亲社会行为的选择刺激呈现阶段和努力阶段。我们考察了36名高社交焦虑者（HSAs）和36名低社交焦虑者（LSAs）的亲社会意图和动机。参与者为了个人利益或他人利益而努力，同时也是为了避免损失。参与者选择是否付出努力，然后在规定时间内完成指定次数的按键操作，以积累奖励或为自己或他人避免损失。研究结果表明，社交焦虑确实会削弱亲社会意图和为获得利益而付出努力的动机。有趣的是，一旦高社交焦虑者决定为获得利益而进行亲社会努力，评价性焦虑会帮助他们减少亲社会冷漠，并将注意力资源从威胁性刺激转移到手头任务上，使他们的亲社会努力水平与低社交焦虑者相当。此外，高社交焦虑者对收益和损失都表现出亲社会冷漠，在损失任务中观察到的亲社会冷漠更为明显。然而，评价性焦虑并不能帮助减少高社交焦虑者在损失任务中的亲社会冷漠。值得注意的是，当努力为他人避免损失时，即使没有评价性焦虑，高社交焦虑者也表现出与低社交焦虑者难以区分的亲社会行为，这表明避免损失的目标促进了高社交焦虑者的亲社会行为。总体而言，虽然社交焦虑会减少个体的亲社会行为，但评价性焦虑和敏感的行动目标可以在一定程度上减轻其影响。这些发现对于制定增强心理健康和促进更健康社交互动的策略至关重要。
