Publications

Objective: Network analysis allows us to identify the most interconnected (i.e., central) symptoms, and multiple authors have suggested that these symptoms might be important treatment targets. This is because change in central symptoms (relative to others) should have greater impact on change in all other symptoms. It has been argued that networks derived from cross-sectional data may help identify such important symptoms. We tested this hypothesis in social anxiety disorder.

Recent evidence suggests that reduced generosity among individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) in behavioral economic tasks may result from constraint in changing behavior according to interpersonal contingencies. That is, people with SAD may be slower to be more generous when the situation warrants.

The use of unreliable measures constitutes a threat to our understanding of psychopathology, because advancement of science using both behavioral and biologically oriented measures can only be certain if such measurements are reliable. Two pillars of the National Institute of Mental Health’s portfolio-the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) initiative for psychopathology and the target engagement initiative in clinical trials-cannot succeed without measures that possess the high reliability necessary for tests involving mediation and selection based on individual differences.

Social anxiety disorder is associated with lower interpersonal warmth, possibly explaining its associated interpersonal impairment. Across two samples, we attempted to replicate previous findings that the disorder’s constraint of interpersonal warmth can be detected via behavioral economic tasks.

High social anxiety in adults is associated with self-report of impaired friendship quality, but not necessarily with impairment reported by friends. Further, prospective prediction of social anxiety and friendship quality over time has not been tested among adults.

Social anxiety disorder is known to be associated with self-report of global friendship quality. However, information about specific friendships, as well as information beyond self-report, is lacking. Such information is crucial, because known biases in information processing related to social anxiety disorder render global self-ratings particularly difficult to interpret.

Abstract: Although social anxiety disorder appears to confer interpersonal impairment in friendships, evidence beyond self-report is minimal. We used the flexible iterated prisoner’s dilemma as a simulated interaction with a friend to determine whether generalized social anxiety disorder conferred constrained behavior characterized by low warmth (coldness), nonassertiveness, and reduced responsiveness.

Abstract: We demonstrate a means of conservatively combining self and peer data regarding personality pathology and interpersonal behavior through structural equation modeling, focusing on avoidant personality disorder traits as well as those of two comparison personality disorders (dependent and narcissistic).

Abstract: Although it is clear that people with social phobia have interpersonal impairment, evidence that social phobia (as opposed to other mental disorders) affects friendship in particular is lacking. Two large epidemiological datasets were used to test whether diagnosis of social phobia is related to perceived friendship quality above and beyond perceived family relationship quality, diagnosis of other mental disorders, and a variety of demographic variables.

Abstract: Previous research indicates that people with social anxiety disorder tend to experience escalating distress when thinking about past social situations. We investigated whether such distress could be limited by either an intervention or the participant’s pre-existing abilities.