Emotion differentiation in social anxiety disorder: A comparison with panic disorder

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common and debilitating disorder. Emotion differentiation (ED), the ability to identify and label distinct emotional experiences, is an emotional construct that plays an important role in SAD. Specifically, ED is vital for adaptive emotion regulation and previous research has suggested it may be disrupted in SAD. The present study examined ED among individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD; n = 44), panic disorder (PD; n = 29), and a control group without SAD or PD (n = 43). Participants were recruited from the community and diagnosed in the lab, and were not treatment-seekers. Mean age was 28.54 (SD = 8.53) and 55.2% of participants were women. Participants completed a 21-day daily diary reporting on eight positive and eight negative emotions each day. ED was calculated separately for positive and negative emotions using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Consistent with the hypotheses, both SAD and PD groups demonstrated poorer ED of negative emotions compared to controls. Individuals with PD, but not SAD, also showed poorer ED of positive emotions relative to both the SAD and control groups. These findings indicate both shared and disorder-specific patterns of ED across SAD and PD. Implications for emotion-focused interventions are discussed, including the potential to tailor interventions to the distinct emotional profiles of SAD and PD.