Social anxiety symptoms are associated with shyness and submissiveness. However, recent work has identified a subtype within Social Anxiety Disorder characterized by high levels of anger and impulsivity. This subtype bears conceptual similarities to prior accounts of vulnerable narcissism (e.g., hypersensitivity and interpersonal reactivity). However, no prior work has systematically evaluated the common and potentially distinguishing factors of these conceptually similar yet phenotypically distinct groups. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to utilize a Latent Profile Analysis (LPA) to distinguish whether vulnerable narcissistic traits are present within high anger, risk-prone individuals who are also socially anxious, or alternatively whether LPA can differentiate these profiles based on response patterns to theoretically relevant variables. LPA identified five distinct profiles based on varying levels of social anxiety, anger, impulsivity, and narcissistic traits, and supported the existence of the angry-impulsive socially anxious subtype as well as a relationship between this group and self-reported narcissistic traits. These findings have implications for treatment of this subgroup, and may provide a foundation for future research investigating why interventions for adults with SAD and angry-impulsive features often have limited success.

社交焦虑症状与害羞和顺从有关。然而，最近的研究发现了社交焦虑症的一个亚型，其特征是高度愤怒和冲动。这种亚型与之前对脆弱自恋的描述在概念上有相似之处（例如，过敏和人际反应）。然而，之前的工作还没有系统地评估这些概念相似但表型不同的群体的共同因素和潜在区别因素。因此，本研究的目的是利用潜在特征分析（LPA）来区分易受伤害的自恋特征是否存在于高度愤怒、有风险倾向且社交焦虑的个体中，或者 LPA 是否可以根据反应来区分这些特征理论相关变量的模式。 LPA 根据不同程度的社交焦虑、愤怒、冲动和自恋特征确定了五种不同的特征，并支持愤怒冲动社交焦虑亚型的存在以及该群体与自我报告的自恋特征之间的关系。这些发现对这一亚群的治疗具有重要意义，并可能为未来研究为什么对患有季节性情绪失调和愤怒冲动特征的成年人进行干预往往效果有限提供基础。