When the Need to Belong Goes Wrong: The Expression of Social Anhedonia and Social Anxiety in Daily Life
Open accessAbstract
People possess an innate need to belong that drives social interactions. Aberrations in the need to belong, such as social anhedonia and social anxiety, provide a point of entry for examining this need. The current study used experience-sampling methodology to explore deviations in the need to belong in the daily lives of 245 undergraduates. Eight times daily for a week, personal digital assistants signaled subjects to complete questionnaires regarding affect, thoughts, and behaviors. As predicted, higher levels of social anhedonia were associated with increased time alone, greater preference for solitude, and lower positive affect. Higher social anxiety, in contrast, was associated with higher negative affect and was not associated with increased time alone. Furthermore, greater social anxiety was associated with greater self-consciousness and preference to be alone while interacting with unfamiliar people. Thus, deviations in the need to belong affect social functioning differently depending on whether this need is absent or thwarted.
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In undergraduate students, SA was not related to a lower desire to be with others.
“These results are aligned with those of other 2 studies conducted on undergraduate students [54,83], which showed that SA was not related to a lower desire to be with others.”
From Studies of Social Anxiety Using Ambulatory Assessment: Systematic Review (2024) · cites this paper as [54]
The Results (p. 8) report that social anxiety was not associated with a lower desire to be with others when participants were alone. The claim omits that condition: the same passage says social anxiety was associated with preferring to be alone when participants were with others. (LLM, conf=0.83)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe lack of significance for positive affect contradicted many other ambulatory assessment studies that yielded significant between-person associations between lower levels of positive affect and higher levels of negative affect with social anxiety.
“This lack of significance contradicted many other AA studies that yielded significant between-person associations between lower levels of PA and higher levels of NA with SA [16,20,30,54,57,58,61,69,70].”
From Studies of Social Anxiety Using Ambulatory Assessment: Systematic Review (2024) · cites this paper as [54]
Social anhedonia manifests as a significantly reduced drive for social affiliation, characterised by the absence of the need to belong to a social group and social disinterest.
“Social anhedonia manifests as a significantly reduced drive for social affiliation (Brown et al., 2007;Kwapil et al., 2009), characterised by the absence of the need to belong to a social group (Brown et al., 2007;Kwapil et al., 2009) and social disinterest (Silvia and Kwapil, 2011).”
From Social functioning in major depressive disorder (2016) · cites this paper as Brown et al., 2007
Social anhedonia has been related to outcomes such as being unmarried, having a low number of friends, and social isolation.
“Social anhedonia has also been related to outcomes such as being unmarried, having a low number of friends, and social isolation (Brown et al., 2007).”
From Social functioning in major depressive disorder (2016) · cites this paper as Brown et al., 2007
Understanding which components of cognitive processing are altered in people with social anhedonia, regardless of diagnostic category, could assist in improving social functioning and therapeutic outcomes.
“Understanding which components of cognitive processing are altered in people with social anhedonia—regardless of diagnostic category—could assist in improving social functioning (30, 31) and therapeutic outcomes (32).”
From A transdiagnostic perspective on social anhedonia (2019) · cites this paper as [30]
People from the general healthy community with high levels of social anhedonia report fewer personal relationships, are less likely to be in intimate relationships, prefer to be alone, and are less committed to and experience fewer positive feelings toward their partner when in a relationship.
“People drawn from the general healthy community with high levels of social anhedonia report fewer personal relationships (30, 36), are less likely to be in intimate relationships (37), prefer to be alone (30), are less committed to, and experience fewer positive feelings toward, their partner when in a relationship (31).”
From A transdiagnostic perspective on social anhedonia (2019) · cites this paper as [30]
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- Authors
- Brown, L. H., Silvia, P. J., Myin-Germeys, I., & Kwapil, T. R.
- Affiliations
- University of North Carolina at Greensboro (US)
- University of Maastricht, Maastricht, The Netherlands
- Corresponding author
- Brown, Leslie H.
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2007-09
- Volume
- 18
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 778-782
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- OpenAlex
- W2139399733
- Cited by
- 241
- References
- 27
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 22 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 13
- FWCI
- 11.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- libres.uncg.edu
- Locations
- Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- NC Digital Online Collection of Knowledge and Scholarship (The University of North Carolina at Greensboro) (submittedVersion)
- Lirias (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Personality Traits and Psychology
- Keywords
- need to belong, social anhedonia, social anxiety, time alone, preference for solitude, positive affect, negative affect, self-consciousness, social functioning, everyday life, ecological momentary assessment
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Affect, Anxiety, Cognition, Female, Humans, Interpersonal Relations, Male, Surveys and Questionnaires, Self Concept, Social Adjustment, Social Behavior, Social Identification, Social Isolation, Stress, Psychological, Students
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