Social anxiety can diminish prosocial motivation, study finds

A study conducted in China found that individuals with pronounced social anxiety tend to be less motivated to engage in prosocial behaviors when these require effort. However, this effect was only observed in tasks where socially anxious individuals were expected to gain something for another person. In contrast, when the goal was to prevent a loss for someone else, there was no difference between participants with high and low social anxiety. The research was published in the International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology.

Social anxiety is characterized by an intense fear of being judged, embarrassed, or negatively evaluated in social situations. People with social anxiety often avoid social interactions or endure them with significant distress. Situations that commonly trigger social anxiety include public speaking, meeting new people, or performing tasks while being observed.

Individuals with social anxiety may also experience physical symptoms such as sweating, trembling, a racing heart, or nausea. This condition can interfere with daily life, making it difficult to form relationships, succeed at work, or participate in social activities. Social anxiety typically develops during adolescence and, if left untreated, can persist into adulthood.

Study author Ye Yang and his colleagues sought to explore the prosocial behaviors of highly socially anxious individuals and compare them to those of individuals with low social anxiety. Previous research has suggested that people with high social anxiety are less likely to engage in prosocial behaviors. For example, they are less inclined to volunteer for tasks that benefit others and tend to be less generous in economic games.

These tendencies may stem from a fear of negative evaluation, rejection, and embarrassment when interacting with others. Their heightened self-consciousness and avoidance behaviors make it difficult for them to initiate or participate in helping actions, even when they have the desire to do so. Based on this, the study authors hypothesized that highly socially anxious individuals would be less willing to engage in prosocial behaviors in public settings. However, they predicted no significant difference between socially anxious and non-anxious individuals when prosocial behaviors occurred in private contexts.

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The researchers conducted two experiments. In the first experiment, 37 university students with high social anxiety and 36 with low social anxiety participated. Their average age was around 20 years. Each participant completed two blocks of 80 trials designed to measure prosocial behavior. One block took place in a private setting (i.e., the participant was alone in a room wearing headphones), while the other was conducted in a public setting, where two observers (one male and one female) were present, and audio feedback was provided through speakers instead of headphones.

Within each block, half of the trials required participants to exert effort for personal gain, while the other half required effort to benefit another person (who was fictional, though participants were unaware of this). The effort-based task involved repeatedly pressing the “Q” key on a keyboard as quickly as possible within a five-second window to earn increased monetary rewards, with the number of key presses determining the payout. Participants could either accept a default outcome, which required no effort, or engage in the key-pressing task. The number of key presses was recorded as an indicator of effort. During these tasks, participants wore an electroencephalography (EEG) device.

The same participants took part in a second experiment with a similar procedure. However, instead of gaining rewards, the task focused on preventing losses. If participants chose not to exert effort, they would incur a 90-cent loss, either for themselves or for another person, depending on the trial. If they chose to exert effort—by pressing the “Q” key as many times as possible within five seconds—the loss could be reduced by up to 10 cents if they were successful.

The first experiment revealed that participants with high social anxiety were more likely to exert effort for themselves than for others. In contrast, those with low social anxiety exerted effort equally in both scenarios. However, when exerting effort, low-anxiety participants were more successful at securing gains for themselves than for others. Meanwhile, participants with high social anxiety performed equally well when securing gains for themselves and for others.

The second experiment showed that all participants were more willing to exert effort to prevent their own losses than to prevent losses for others. However, unlike in the first experiment, there were no significant differences between participants with high and low social anxiety in the amount of effort they expended to avoid loss. Additionally, the public versus private context had no effect on behavior in either experiment.

“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,” the study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on the links between social anxiety and prosocial behaviors. However, it is important to note that the study involved relatively small monetary gains and losses, minimal effort requirements, and fictional beneficiaries of prosocial behavior. If the stakes had been higher—such as requiring greater effort or involving real individuals known to the participants—the results might have been different.

The paper, “Social anxiety undermines prosocial behaviors when required effort,” was authored by Ye Yang, Yan Zhou, Huijuan Zhang, Hui Kou, Jia Zhao, Jiangli Tian, and Cheng Guo.