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

Background: Biased and inflexible interpretations of ambiguous social situations are hypothesized to elevate risk for depression and social anxiety via their effects on social and affective processes. Yet, empirical support for this hypothesis remains limited. Methods: This study investigated these socio-affective pathways by having a crowdsourced sample (N = 295) complete the emotional Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence task – a cognitive task designed to disentangle interpretation bias and inflexibility. Participants also completed measures of depression, social anxiety, and various aspects of socio-affective functioning, including rejection sensitivity, interpersonal emotion regulation, negative social interactions, and social integration. Results: Network analysis revealed that negatively biased and inflexible interpretations were indirectly related to psychopathology symptoms through negative social interactions and putatively maladaptive interpersonal emotion regulation strategies, such as negative feedback-seeking, excessive reassurance-seeking, co-rumination, and co-dampening. Additionally, positive interpretation bias was indirectly related to both depression and social anxiety symptoms through its negative association with rejection sensitivity. Conclusions: By elucidating these pathways linking interpretation processes to depression and social anxiety via socio-affective functioning, this study provides a foundation for future empirical research and the development of more comprehensive cognitive-interpersonal theories of depression and social anxiety.