Navigating the Social World: The Interplay Between Cognitive and Socio-Affective Processes in Depression and Social Anxiety

Although biased and inflexible interpretations of ambiguous social situations are thought to increase risk for depression and social anxiety via their effects on social and affective processes, empirical evidence for this is limited. This study probed these pathways by having a crowdsourced sample (N = 295) complete the Emotional Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence Task – a cognitive task which disentangles interpretation bias and inflexibility – along with measures of depression/social anxiety and aspects of socio-affective functioning (rejection sensitivity, interpersonal emotion regulation, negative social interactions, social integration). Network analysis revealed that negatively biased and inflexible negative interpretations were indirectly related to psychopathology symptoms via negative social interactions and potentially maladaptive interpersonal emotion regulation strategies (excessive reassurance-seeking, co-rumination, co-dampening, and negative feedback-seeking). Moreover, positive interpretation bias was indirectly related to both depression and social anxiety symptoms through its negative association with rejection sensitivity. By uncovering these pathways linking interpretation processes to depression and social anxiety via socio-affective functioning, this study lays foundations for future empirical work as well as comprehensive cognitive-interpersonal theories of depressive and anxiety disorders.