Family functioning relationship with social anxiety disorder mediated by shyness and difficulty in regulating emotions

Subject Areas : Thoughts and Behavior in Clinical Psychology

Farhad Mohamadi Masiri ¹ , Nader Hajilo ² , Abbas Abolghasemi ³

1 - دپارتمان روان شناسی، دانشگاه محقق اردبیلی، اردبیل، ایران.
2 - دپارتمان روان شناسی، دانشگاه محقق اردبیلی، اردبیل، ایران.
3 - دپارتمان روان شناسی، دانشگاه گیلان، گیلان، ایران.

Received: 2016-09-12 Accepted : 2016-09-12 Published : 2016-12-21

Keywords: shyness, family functioning, Social anxiety, emotional regulation,

Abstract :

Social anxiety is one of the anxiety disorders. People with social anxiety disorder are afraid of social situations in which they think they may behave in an embarrassing way or be negatively evaluated by others, and try to avoid them. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between family functioning and social anxiety disorder mediated by shyness and the difficulty in emotional regulation. Therefore, in a descriptive and correlational study, 500 first year high school students in Shahrekord city were selected through multistage cluster sampling method and evaluated for family functioning, emotional regulation, social anxiety and shyness. Scores path analysis showed that the proposed model fitted well and the path from family functioning to shyness, family functioning to difficulty in emotional regulation, family functioning to social anxiety, shyness to social anxiety, and difficulty in emotional regulation to social anxiety is significant. Considering indirect effects of family functioning on social anxiety through shyness and difficulty in emotional regulation, it can be concluded that the coefficient effect of family functioning through shyness and emotional regulation difficulties on social anxiety is significant. According to the results, shyness and difficulty in emotional regulation could be considered as an appropriate intermediary in the relationship between family functioning and social anxiety.