The Complex Link Between Social Skill and Dysphoria

Abstract

Although it is often claimed that social skill deficits create and maintain a state of dysphoria, the empirical findings are mixed. A review of the literature revealed the existence of three factors that help to explain the inconsistent results: conceptualization of social skill, the perspective from which social skill is assessed (i.e., actor, observer, or behavioral), and situational outcome. An experiment was conducted to study the effects of these factors in a single investigation. The results showed that the link between social skill and dysphoria is complex and subject to change as a function of the three factors examined in this study.