Page 219 - Demo

General Discussion2177experience, the higher social anxiety traits were, the more individuals perceived themselves as less confident and, additionally, overestimated negative perceptions by their partners (i.e., being seen as less confident). This mirrors previous work on negatively biased self-related beliefs in social situations in high social anxiety traits (Kashdan & Savostyanova, 2011) as well as in social anxiety (Hirsch & Clark, 2004). Partners, in contrast, were rated as more attractive and, surprisingly, more similar to oneself with higher social anxiety traits. Autistic traits were exclusively linked to ratings of the interaction itself, which was experienced as more awkward by individuals with higher autistic traits. When linking subjective experience to trust behaviour, trustworthiness ratings of the partner were less associated with monetary investments in individuals with higher social anxiety traits when the partner was visible (versus not). Hence, in face-to-face interactions with others, individuals with higher social anxiety trait levels may base their trust behaviour on different information than the perceived trustworthiness of their partner. Looking at a different level of description, I did not observe robust evidence for alterations in physiological synchrony associated with either autistic traits or social anxiety traits. Yet, with higher social anxiety traits, heart rate synchrony was less positively associated with monetary returns to partners, independent of whether they were visible or not. Prosocial behaviour may, thus, have been less motivated by being %u201cin tune%u201d with others in individuals with high social anxiety trait levels. Future analyses including the clinical subgroups will help to understand to which degree (altered) subjective experiences and (altered) physiological alignment may play a role in (alterations in) a fundamental building block of social relations, namely to trust others. Importantly, when conducting real-life social interaction research, not only characteristics of the person of interest but also of their interaction partner should be taken into account. Generally, we tend to surround ourselves with people who are similar to us (Bolis et al., 2021). Clinical research, however, mainly pairs dissimilar interactants, one individual with a condition and a control without a condition, to investigate social functioning. Hence, observed difficulties might reflect differences in processing styles between individuals, rather than %u201cdeficits%u201d of one individual, as proposed by the dialectical misattunement hypothesis (Bolis et al., 2018) or the %u201cDouble Empathy problem%u201d (Milton, 2012). Individuals with stronger differences in processing and experiencing the environment are assumed to align less easily with each other, compared to more similar individuals, including two