Social anhedonia and autism

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One should distinguish social anxiety and social anhedonia. Social anxiety is where you're OK alone, but anxiety, low self-esteem, and self-consciousness increase whenever you socialize. Social anhedonia is where you're OK alone, but you get little to no enjoyment when socializing. Basically, social anxiety is characterized by lots of negative feelings, while social anhedonia is characterized by a lack of positive feelings, even when there are no negative feelings (meaning it's characterized more by apathy). (Of course, you can have both.)

With social anxiety, you often get what is called "active social withdrawal," which is often abrupt because you're reacting to the negative feelings. There's often an attitude of, "Screw everybody! Socializing is just too hard!" Note that there is no actual apathy in this attitude; in fact, that you have the attitude shows you care about the issue quite a bit. With social anhedonia, you get a more "passive/apathetic social withdrawal," which tends to be insidious and results from the lack of pleasure; since you no longer get pleasure from socializing, you gradually stop over time as you don't see the point. There is often no attitude here, as you just kinda stop socializing over time without realizing that you are, as the lack of pleasure means you no longer put any effort into socializing. There is apathy here, because you hardly even think about the fact you've stopped socializing.

Social anhedonia when it is chronic and occurs independently of mood has severe consequences for the sufferer and greatly increases the likelihood of onset of schizophrenia. It can also occur in depession, though that has somewhat different implications.

Social anxiety is a lot more common and much easier to treat than social anhedonia that is chronic and occurs independently of mood.