Social anxiety and romantic relationships: the costs and benefits of negative emotion expression are context-dependent.

Full Abstract

In general, expressing emotions is beneficial and withholding emotions has personal and social costs. Yet, to serve social functions there are situations when emotions are withheld strategically. We examined whether social anxiety influenced when and how emotion expressiveness influences interpersonal closeness in existing romantic relationships. For people with greater social anxiety, withholding the expression of negative emotions was proposed to preserve romantic relationships and their benefits. We examined whether social anxiety and emotion expressiveness interacted to predict prospective changes in romantic relationship closeness over a 12-week period. For people with less social anxiety, relationship closeness was enhanced over time when negative emotions were openly expressed whereas relationship deterioration was found for those more likely to withhold emotions. The reverse pattern was found for people with greater social anxiety such that relationship closeness was enhanced over time for those more likely to withhold negative emotions. Related social anxiety findings were found for discrepancies between desired and actual feelings of closeness over time. Findings were not attributable to depressive symptoms. These results suggest that the costs and benefits of emotion expression are influenced by a person's degree of social anxiety.

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Author information

Author/s: Kashdan, Todd B (TB); Volkmann, Jeffrey R (JR); Breen, William E (WE); Han, Susan (S);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, George Mason University, Mail Stop 3F5, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA. tkashdan(-atsign-)gmu.edu <tkashdan(-atsign-)gmu.edu>

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Journal of anxiety disorders (J Anxiety Disord), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-; vol 21 (issue 4) : pp 475-92

Dates: Created 2007/05/07; Completed 2007/07/11;

PMID: 17045778, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adolescent
Adult
Anxiety - psychology
Courtship - psychology
Emotions
Female
Humans

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