Social anxiety, anxiety, and depression, have become “popular” terms in our daily life. They’re highly comorbid in both clinical and subclinical level, leading to impaired social functions. A better understanding of mechanism across these mental diseases might provide insights for improved intervention results, further contributing to a prosperous life for sufferers and their surroundings. In the present study, we focused on the Affiliation Motivation (AM) among different subclinical populations. The Interpersonal Orientation Scale (IOS) was adopted to examine the similarities and the differences of need for intimacy among individuals with social anxiety, trait anxiety, and depression. A total of 322 individuals have completed our online survey. After controlling for the factors of age, sex, and years of education, our results showed: 1) social anxiety scores were not correlated with any dimension of IOS-measured AM, suggesting an intact AM in social anxiety. 2) trait anxiety scores were significantly negatively correlated with the dimensions of “emotional support” (p = 0.001) and “positive stimulation” (p < 0.001), marginally significantly negatively correlated with the “attention” dimension (p < 0.1), and were not with the “social comparison” dimension. 3) depression scores were significantly negatively correlated with all four dimensions, indicating a general deficiency of AM.