Abstract
Prior research indicates that social functioning is impacted by both social engagement and subjective experience regarding social interactions. The goal of this study was to examine the extent to which each component, as well as their interaction, contributes to social dysfunction in a combined nonclinical and transdiagnostic psychiatric sample. A sample of young adults (n=193) spanning the social dysfunction spectrum completed measures that capture different forms of psychopathology relevant to social dysfunction, from which two dimensions – Subjective Psychosocial Difficulties (SPD) and Observed Social Difficulties (OSD) – were extracted using Principal Components Analysis. Participants additionally completed a variety of clinician-rated and self-reported social functioning measures that were aggregated into one overall social functioning score. Hierarchical regression was used to examine the unique contribution of SPD and OSD and their interaction on overall social functioning. SPD and OSD explained unique variance (Δr2=61.0%), indicating that elevated SPD and OSD levels predicted worse social functioning. The SPD-by-OSD interaction was positive and explained significant additional amounts of variance (Δr2=1.9%), indicating a less-than-additive effect on social dysfunction. The findings suggest that examining observable social behaviors and subjective psychosocial experience simultaneously is important for understanding social functional outcomes in clinical populations.