Factors impacting the experience of empathic distress in social anxiety: a path analysis approach

ABSTRACT

Personal distress is a manifestation of empathy characterized by a tendency to respond to others’ difficulties by increasing one’s distress. Previous work on socially anxious individuals has shown mixed results, consistent with a model of social anxiety symptomatology characterized by increased personal distress in empathy eliciting situations, which is driven by emotional dysregulation. The current study aimed to test a serial mediation model to uncover the role of emotional dysregulation in the relationship between social anxiety and empathic distress. 330 young adults were included in the sample. Social anxiety symptomatology, difficulty identifying one’s feelings, expressive suppression, and empathic distress were analyzed through Structural Equation Modeling. Measurement and structural models were supported by data, with social anxiety exhibiting direct and indirect effects on empathic distress. Results also suggest that expressive suppression exhibits a negative effect on the distress exhibited in empathy eliciting situations, which brings forth relevant theoretical and clinical implications.

KEYWORDS:

• Social anxiety
• alexithymia
• emotion regulation
• personal distress
• difficulty identifying feelings
• expressive suppression

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/8DKCM.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Data. The data are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/8DKCM.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Ana Cosmoiu

Ana Cosmoiu is a teaching and research assistant at the University of Bucharest. Her research interests are focused on social cognition and particularly the functioning of social cognition in psychopathology and its impact on treatment.

Cătălin Nedelcea

Cătălin Nedelcea is a psychology professor at the University of Bucharest, teaching mainly psychotherapy and psychological assessment. His research interests are focused on psychotherapy, trauma psychology, and psychological assessment.