Peer relations, parental social coaching, and young adolescent social anxiety

Abstract

Links between peer relationship difficulties, parental social coaching, and social anxiety were examined among young adolescents (N = 80). In a lab protocol simulating peer stress, adolescents led a 3-min conversation, while ostensibly being evaluated by (fictitious) peer judges. Parental coaching was measured via observed cognitive framing and advice-giving; parents also reported on their facilitation of access to peers, and their adolescent's peer victimization and rejection. Social anxiety was measured through both global-and contextspecific reports. More socially anxious youths (1) experienced more peer rejection and (2) had parents who engaged in poorer quality coaching (i.e., lower prosocial advice, benign interpretation, and facilitation). Evidence of additive effects of peer problems and parenting was found, and the pattern of findings was similar after controlling for adolescent social skills. Results suggest that both negative peer experiences and parental coaching may need to be targeted to reduce social anxiety during early adolescence.

Doxing: What Adolescents Look for and Their Intentions

“…Both boys and girls engage in doxing, although we found the latter to be significantly more likely to conduct social doxing via SNSs. Girls were found to have more social anxiety than boys in previous research [28,29], which may explain their intentions of social doxing. Even though we identified no gender differences in hostile doxing, significantly more boys than girls targeted personally identifiable and physical location information and other types of private and sensitive data.…”

Multiple Mediation of Loneliness and Negative Emotions in the Relationship between Adolescents’ Social Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms

“…Adolescents with social anxiety may prefer loneliness because they think that they are unwanted and evaluated negatively by others. When adolescents in much need of peer support are rejected by their peers, they experience more social anxiety (Su, Pettit & Erath, 2016).When the emphasis on peer relationships during adolescence is taken into account, an adolescent is likely to experience loneliness and negative affects upon being unable to initiate and sustain relationships. On the other hand, adolescents with high levels of social anxiety may feel lonely upon thinking that this situation will not change for the better as they often experience anxiety.…”

“…In addition, negative experiences with peers and lack of self-confidence in an individual's skills may lead to social anxiety and social withdrawal (Inderbitzen, Walters & Bukowski, 1997). Su, Pettit & Erath's (2016) study on adolescents showed that adolescents rejected by friends and less guided by families experienced more social anxiety. Individuals with high levels of social anxiety have been observed to avoid social environments and to have difficulties initiating and sustaining friendships.…”

Direct and Compensatory Parental Responses to Peer Victimization

“…More recently, models of parental social coaching have been applied to older children and young adolescents. For example, observations of parental prosocial behavioral advice (e.g., find common ground) and benign cognitive framing (e.g., recall times when peers have been friendly) during a parent-adolescent discussion about responding to peer rebuff each independently and concurrently predicted lower social anxiety among early adolescents (Su, Pettit, & Erath, 2016). Moreover, parent-reported prosocial behavioral advice and benign cognitive framing in response to hypothetical peer-problem vignettes independently and prospectively predicted young adolescents’ higher peer acceptance, as rated by parents and teachers, controlling for earlier levels of peer acceptance (Gregson, Tu, Erath, & Pettit, 2017).…”