Abstract
Social anxiety and depression are associated with interpretation biases and impairment in social cognitive ability (e.g., understanding the mental states of others), yet there is little known about their associations with emotional congruence (i.e., the extent to which a perceiver shares the emotional experience of a target). The present study examined the association between dimensional levels of social anxiety, depression, and emotional congruence, as well as the moderating role of anhedonia and stimuli valence. Neither social anxiety nor depressive symptoms significantly predicted emotional congruence. Further, no significant associations were found when including the moderators following multiple test correction. Although previous studies have shown that social anxiety and depressive symptoms can impact cognitive empathic processes, the present findings demonstrate that these symptoms may not be related to affective empathy.
Degree Date
Summer 2020
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Department
Psychology
Advisor
Benjamin A. Tabak
Number of Pages
58
Format
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Alvi, Talha, "Social Anxiety, Depression, and Emotional Congruence" (2020). Psychology Theses and Dissertations. 19.
https://scholar.smu.edu/hum_sci_psychology_etds/19
