Social anxiety and emotion knowledge: a meta-analysis

It has been proposed that social anxiety is associated with poor emotion knowledge (EK), although studies have revealed mixed results. The aim of the present paper was to systematically investigate the association between EK and both non-clinical and clinical social anxiety by means of meta-analyses. Systematic, electronic database literature searches were performed, and meta-analyses were conducted on 43 included studies. Results showed that social anxiety was negatively associated with EK. The strongest association was found between clinical levels of social anxiety and the ability to understand one's own emotions (intrapersonal EK). Regarding interpersonal EK, a subgroup analysis showed that social anxiety was more strongly associated with a decreased ability to understand complex emotions than to recognize basic emotions. No differences were found between patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and patients with other anxiety disorders. Although a large between study heterogeneity and differing methodologies may prevent any firm conclusions from being reached, the results indicate that poor EK may play an important role in SAD, and that it could be beneficial to target EK in the treatment of SAD.