I think this framing is really insightful. It reminds me of prospect theory in behavioral econ - people tend to be more motivated to avoid losses than to achieve equivalent gains. Social anxiety might be the emotional manifestation of this asymmetry in the social domain. The distinction seems to also be supported by evol theory w/ how in ancestral environments, being actively disliked or rejected by the tribe could be fatal, whilst merely not being especially popular didn't have equal catastrophe.
I wonder if this also explains why exposure therapy works for social anxiety - it's not teaching you that people will like you more than you expect (though sometimes that happens), but rather demonstrating that the consequences of being disliked or making social mistakes are less catastrophic than your anxiety system predicted.
One question I have: could different types of social anxiety be differently motivated? Some people might genuinely be optimizing for approval rather than avoiding disapproval. This might explain why some socially anxious people become people-pleasers while others become avoidant. However, as someone who thinks self-curing a paralyzing social anxiety, is one of their greatest life achievements, I certainly am in the camp that argues in favor of the framing in this post :)
Most intriguing is this hints at a testable hypothesis: policy markets should show greater inefficiency in domains where feedback loops are longest and most distorted. Would bet FOIAs on national security consistently outperform economic policy FOIAs in information yield despite lower attention