5 - (SYM 40) The Daily Dance of Desire: Social Motivation in Social Anxiety Disorder

Abstract Body
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by reduced social approach behaviors, but are such behaviors related to reduced social approach motivation and are there varying levels of approach motivation toward close and distant others? Using a daily diary format, we examined the relationship between social anxiety and trait-level social approach motivation as well as day-to-day variability in social approach motivation among people with varying social anxiety levels. At baseline, the 169 participants completed the Social Phobia Inventory (SPIN) to assess trait social anxiety, and each evening they reported their daily desire to connect with both new and close others using a modified version of the State Motivation to Foster Social Connection Scale. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) indicated that variability in motivation was driven by both between- and within-person effects (new relationships: ICC = 0.58; close relationships: ICC = 0.52). Consistent with our hypotheses, higher social anxiety was significantly associated with lower average daily motivation to connect with others for both new (ρ = -0.27, p < .001) and close relationships (ρ = -0.38, p < .001). Moreover, exploratory analyses revealed that greater day-to-day variability in motivation for new relationships predicted higher social anxiety levels (β = 0.20, exp(β) = 1.22, p = 0.04), with a similar trend emerging for close relationships (β = 0.18, p = 0.06). These findings suggest that SAD may be characterized not only by an overall reduction in social approach motivation, but also by heightened fluctuations in motivational drive. Such dynamic variability could reflect underlying ambivalence toward social engagement and may inform the development of interventions aimed at stabilizing social motivation in individuals with social anxiety.