Social avoidance can be quantified as navigation in abstract social space.

ABSTRACT: We navigate social relationships daily, making decisions that can change our affiliation and power relations with others. People high in social avoidance report perceiving little affiliation and power in their social lives. Do they also make low affiliation and low power interaction choices in actual social interactions? We hypothesized that social avoidance can be quantified as navigation in an abstract social space framed by power and affiliation. To test this, we recruited two large samples of online participants (Initial sample n = 579, Validation sample n = 255) to complete a naturalistic social interaction game where they form relationships with fictional characters, and a battery of questionnaires. Factor analysis of the questionnaires revealed a social avoidance factor that related

SUBMITTER: Schafer M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11936828 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature