Social anxiety and self-compassion in adolescents
Open accessAbstract
INTRODUCTION: Social anxiety disorder is a prevalent mental illness with a young onset age. Preliminary evidence suggested that low self-compassion may contribute to adult social anxiety, but research with youth has lagged far behind. This study investigated the relationship between selfcompassion and social anxiety in adolescents. It also examined the mediating role of three cognitive mechanisms: fear of negative evaluation, self-focused attention, and cognitive avoidance. METHODS: A total of 316 adolescents (age 14-18, 54% male) recruited in Scotland, UK, completed 7 questionnaires. RESULTS: Self-compassion was inversely correlated with social anxiety with a large effect size (r = -.551). This was partially mediated by fear of negative evaluation and cognitive avoidance, but not self-focused attention. Selfcompassion also predicted social anxiety above depression and anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggested that self-compassion could be an important factor in the development of social anxiety, and hence therapeutic techniques targeting self-compassion could potentially be beneficial in preventing or treating adolescent social anxiety.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Self-compassion, difficulty in emotion regulation, and extreme feelings of shame are among the most important psychological problems experienced by people with social anxiety disorder.
“Previous studies have identified selfcompassion, [12][13][14][15] difficulty in emotion regulation, [16][17][18] and extreme feelings of shame 19,20 as the most important psychological problems experienced by people with social anxiety disorder.”
From The effectiveness of acceptance and commitment therapy for social anxiety disorder: A randomized clinical trial (2020) · cites this paper as [12]
The citation to Gill is attached to self-compassion, not to emotion regulation or shame. The Discussion (p. 13) reports a strong negative association between self-compassion and social anxiety in an adolescent community sample, but does not rank low self-compassion among the most important problems experienced by people with social anxiety disorder. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 83 · Cited by 88
Research works printed but not linked: 3
- Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M.F. & Buss, A.H. (1975). Public and private selfconsciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, 522-527.
- Mor, N. & Winquist, J. (2002). Self-focused attention and negative affect: A metaanalysis. Psychological Bulletin, 128(4), 638-662.
- Turner, R.G., Scheier, M.F., Carver, C.S. & Ickes, W. (1978). Correlates of selfconsciousness. Journal of Personality Assessment, 42, 285-289.
- Authors
- Gill, C., Watson, L., Williams, C., & Chan, S. W. Y.
- Affiliations
- NHS Lanarkshire (GB)
- University of Edinburgh (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Chan, Stella W.Y.
- ORCID
- Chan, Stella W.Y.
- Venue
- Journal of Adolescence
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2018-10-13
- Volume
- 69
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 163-174
- ISSN
- 0140-1971 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9254
- OpenAlex
- W2896572995
- Cited by
- 88
- References
- 83
- Citations by year
- 2026: 12 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 3
- FWCI
- 6.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hdl.handle.net
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Adolescence (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Keywords
- social anxiety, self-compassion, adolescents, fear of negative evaluation, self-focus, cognitive avoidance, mediation, depression, anxiety symptoms
- MeSH terms
- Phobia, Social, Adolescent, Empathy, Fear, Female, Humans, Male, Surveys and Questionnaires, Scotland, Self Concept
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
