Effect of Parent–Child Attachment on College Students’ Social Anxiety: A Moderated Mediation Model

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between parent–child attachment and social anxiety in college students, as well as the mediating role of psychological resilience and the moderating role of online social support. In total, 614 college students were recruited by the cluster sampling method. The results showed that (1) parent–child attachment was negatively correlated with college students’ social anxiety and positively correlated with their psychological resilience, (2) psychological resilience played a mediating role between parent–child attachment and college students’ social anxiety, and (3) online social support regulated the first half and second half of the mediation process in which parent–child attachment affected college students’ social anxiety through psychological resilience. These findings revealed the mechanism of parent–child attachment affecting social anxiety, which had important theoretical and empirical value for enhancing the strength of college students’ psychological resilience and alleviating social anxiety.

Keywords

Parent–child attachment social anxiety psychological resilience online social support college students

Introduction

Social anxiety refers to the negative emotional experience such as anxiety, tension, and fear caused by excessive worry of being evaluated by other people in interpersonal communication (Boehme, Miltner, & Straube, 2014; Morrison & Heimberg, 2013). Previous studies have shown that more than half (65.4%) of college students had moderate social anxiety, while nearly a quarter (22.4%) had severe social anxiety (C. Zhao & Dai, 2016). Previous studies have also revealed that social anxiety not only seriously endangers the psychosocial adaptation, interpersonal communication, and academic achievement of college students (Brook & Willoughby, 2015; Su & Song, 2005) but also leads to internalization and externalization problems such as depression and aggressive behaviors (Morrison & Heimberg, 2013; Wu, Huang, He, Tang, & Pu, 2015). Therefore, to explore the causes of college students’ social anxiety has become an urgent problem for researchers.

Existing studies have found that the internal and external factors of individuals are the two main aspects causing their social anxiety (G. Liu, Pan, Li, Meng, & Zhang, 2017; Mothander & Wang, 2014; X. Zhao, Zhang, Chen, & Zhou, 2014). According to the emotional security theory, one of the primary external factors of individuals’ social anxiety is family, and parents play a crucial role in individuals’ acquisition of emotional security (Cummings, Schermerhorn, Davies, Goekemorey, & Cummings, 2006). Parent–child attachment is one of the most important family factors, which directly determines the occurrence and development of college students’ social anxiety and other emotions (McCarthy, Lambert, & Moller, 2006). In addition, the social learning theory points out that individuals’ social mode is acquired mainly through observation and imitation (Gavazzi, 2011). Early attachment experience is the foundation of individuals’ social development and the prototype of interpersonal relationships in their future (Li, Sun, Ta, & Liu, 2016). Previous studies have also confirmed that parent plays an important part in the development of individuals’ interpersonal relationships, for example, adolescents who grow up in families with more parental conflict exhibit more aggressive behaviors than their peers (Xia, Liu, Gu, & Dong, 2016), while those who maintain healthy attachment with their parents show more prosocial behaviors (Wang et al., 2017). As mentioned above, parent–child attachment is negatively correlated with individuals’ social anxiety. However, the mechanism underlying the relationship between parent–child attachment and social anxiety is still unclear. Therefore, understanding the underlying mechanism of parent–child attachment in college students’ social anxiety would not only contribute to alleviating their social anxiety but also help to formulate reasonable intervention strategies and effective prevention measures to promote college students’ physical and psychological health.

From the perspective of positive psychology, psychological resilience refers to an internal psychological quality that helps individuals overcome adversity, resist the negative impact of traumatic events, and recover quickly from extreme situation (J. Sun & Stewart, 2010). Family is a crucial subsystem to individuals’ growth and development and plays an important role in the formation and development of college students’ psychological qualities (Herman et al., 2011). Previous research confirmed that individuals with higher levels of psychological resilience could actively mobilize psychological resources and be more confident in interpersonal interactions, leading to good self-experiences and less anxiety (Schelble, Franks, & Miller, 2010). In contrast, individuals with lower levels of psychological resilience are sensitive toward interpersonal relationships, vulnerable to negative social events such as peer rejection and isolation, and prone to social avoidance, which then lead to interpersonal tension and negative emotions such as social anxiety (Liao, Ye, Jin, Xu, & Li, 2017). It can be speculated that parent–child attachment may affect college students’ social anxiety through psychological resilience. Based on this, this study proposed Hypothesis 1 (H1)

H1: Psychological resilience played a mediating role between parent–child attachment and social anxiety.

According to the framework of psychological resilience, the development of psychological resilience is influenced by external factors of individuals (Mandleco & Peery, 2000). As an important component of external factors, social support plays a positive role in promoting the development of individual psychological resilience (Sippel, Pietrzak, Charney, Mayes, & Southwick, 2015). However, with the advent of the information age, the form of social support has also become diversified. Due to the immediacy and convenience of the Internet, the network has become an important place for college students to obtain social support (Freeman, Barker, & Pistrang, 2008; X. Zheng, 2013). Online social support refers to the sense of identity and belonging acquired in the process of emotion, information, and material exchange with others on online social media platforms (Lin & Bhattacherjee, 2009). Previous studies have shown that when individuals encounter difficulties in reality, emotional support and support from the Internet can effectively reduce the pressure of them. Encouragement and companionship from the Internet can increase the courage of individuals to face difficulties (Hu, Fan, Zhang, Xie, & He, 2014). Moreover, online social support can effectively reduce the sense of alienation and loneliness of individuals (Jiang & Bai, 2014; Takao, Takahashi, & Kitamura, 2009), so that individuals can fully mobilize protective factors in the face of negative events, which then promote the development of psychological resilience (Dan & You, 2017). In addition, according to the “Poor get Richer Model” proposed by Lei (2010), individuals with insufficient social support in reality are more likely to socialize online to obtain sufficient social support. Family support is an important source of social support, once it is lacking or insufficient, individuals will turn their attention to the Internet environment (Lei, 2010; Olsson, Bond, Burns, Vella-Brodrick, & Sawyer, 2003). Based on this, this study proposed Hypothesis 2 (H2):

H2: Online social support played a moderating role in the process of parent–child attachment affecting college students’ psychological resilience.

With the popularity of the Internet and social media, the frequency of people’s online social interactions is increasing (Valkenburg & Peter, 2007). Weidman et al. (2012) found that individuals who socialize online tend to have more social support in reality and experience relatively low sense of stress and anxiety. It has been found that online social support can increase college students’ psychological harmony and interpersonal trust; enhance their self-esteem and social efficacy, and thus make it easier to establish stable and benign relationships with others (P. Liu, Jiang, & Bai, 2014; X. Sun, Zhao, Zhou, Xie, & Tong, 2015); and reduce the risk of suffering negative emotions (Lei & Liu, 2005). However, individuals with different levels of online social support have different possibilities for generating social anxiety. For example, high-level online social support can effectively reduce the sense of pressure in social interactions and form harmonious interpersonal relationships with others (Wright, 2000), thereby improving college students’ subjective well-being and mental health of college students (Ma, Yang, Zhu, Zhang, & Du, 2011; L. Zhang, Zheng, Yan, Wen, & Shi, 2007). In contrast, college students who lack online social support have low-level interpersonal trust, they often fall into doubt when interact with others, and are difficult to establish friendship, which is prone to social distress and anxiety (X. Sun et al., 2015; Wang & Li, 2014). In addition, researchers have found that individuals with high psychological resilience tend to be proactive in finding Internet resources to obtain social support and enrich interpersonal relationships (Campbell-Sills, Cohan, & Stein, 2006); therefore, they show less negative emotions such as social anxiety in their life. Based on this, this study proposed Hypothesis 3 (H3):

H3: Online social support regulated the mediation process in which parent–child attachment affected college students’ social anxiety through psychological resilience.

In addition, whether online social support can directly moderate the influence of parent–child attachment on college students’ social anxiety is also worth exploring. Therefore, this study proposed an exploratory Hypothesis 4 (H4):

H4: Online social support could also moderate the direct effect of parent–child attachment on college students’ social anxiety.

In summary, this study mainly discusses two questions. First, what is the influence of parent–child attachment on college students’ social anxiety, and whether psychological resilience plays a mediating role between them? Second, whether online social support can moderate the first half of the path, the second half of the path, and the direct path of the mediation process? Focusing on these two questions, this study intends to construct a moderated mediation model (see Figure 1) to comprehensively investigate the effects of parent–child attachment, psychological resilience, and online social support on social anxiety, in order to provide empirical support and theoretical guidance for intervention programs to reduce college students’ social anxiety.

Figure 1.

Hypothetical model.

Methods

Participants

The cluster sampling method was adopted to randomly recruit 700 college students from seven levels of different colleges in China for the questionnaire survey. In total, 673 valid questionnaires were collected with a recovery rate of 96.1%. After deleting the questionnaires with too short filling time and inconsistent answers, 614 valid questionnaires were selected to ensure the authenticity and reliability of the data. Participants included 232 males (37.79%) and 382 females (62.21%); 219 freshmen (35.67%), 173 sophomores (28.18%), 107 juniors (17.43%), and 115 seniors (18.73%); 354 rural (57.65%) students and 260 urban (42.34%) students; 268 only children (43.65%) and 346 non-only children (56.35%). Participants were between the age of 17 and 25 years, with an average age of 20.39 years (SD = 1.21).

Measures

Parent–child Attachment

The Father–Child and Mother–Child Attachment scales, which are subscales of the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment compiled by Armsden and Greenberg (1987) and revised by Raja, McGee, and Stanton (1992), were employed. There are 10 items in each dimension, totaling 20 items. A five-point Likert-type scale is used for scoring, 1 means “completely inconsistent” and 5 means “completely consistent.” Two factors are added to obtain the total score of parent–child attachment; the higher the total score, the higher the quality of attachment. The internal consistency coefficient of this scale in this study was 0.95 and two subscales was 0.92 (father–child) and 0.91 (mother–child).

Psychological resilience

The Resilience Scale, compiled by Wagnild and Young (1993) and revised by Y. Zheng, Fan, Yu, and Luo (2011), is mainly used to measure individuals’ psychological resilience, including the three dimensions of optimism, strength, and self-confidence. The scale includes 25 items, using seven-point scoring method, 1 means “complete non-conformity” and 7 means “completely consistent.” The total psychological resilience score is composed of three-dimensional scores, the higher the total score is, the higher the level of psychological resilience is. The internal consistency coefficient of this scale in this study was 0.97 and three subscales was 0.83 (optimism), 0.95 (strength), and 0.93 (self-confidence).

Online social support

The College Students’ Online Social Support Questionnaire compiled by Liang and Wei (2008) includes four dimensions: emotional support, instrumental support, information support, and friend support. The four factors are added to obtain the total score for online social support. The scale includes 25 items. A five-point scoring method is used, 1 means “completely inconsistent” and 5 means “completely consistent,” the higher the total score, the higher the level of online social support. The internal consistency coefficient of this scale in this study was 0.94 and four subscales was 0.91 (emotional support), 0.80 (instrumental support), 0.91 (information support), and 0.85 (friend support).

Social anxiety

The Social Anxiousness Scale (SAS), compiled by Leary and Dobbins (1983) and revised by Peng, Gong, and Zhu (2004), was used to assess the level of subjective social anxiety experienced independent of behavior. The scale consists of 15 items scoring by five-point scoring method, 1 means “not consistent with me at all” and 5 means “extremely consistent with me.” The higher the total score is, the higher the level of subjective social anxiety experienced is. The internal consistency coefficient of this scale in this study was 0.92.

Procedure

After obtaining informed consent from college leaders and participants, questionnaire instructions were explained by professionally trained personnel. Questionnaires were completed independently and collected on the spot after participants understood the instructions. In addition, this study conducted questionnaires at seven different levels of colleges at the same time, and the purpose of this study was to keep the chief examiner confidential, avoiding the impact of additional variables such as time, the chief examiner, and so on.

Data analysis

After eliminating invalid questionnaires, SPSS 22.0 and Amos 21.0 were used for data analysis. In the classical parameter test, once the premise of the normal distribution and homogeneity of variance are not satisfied, the possibility of making class I and class II errors will be greatly increased. According to the suggestions of Erceg-Hurn and Mirosevich (2008), the significance of regression coefficient was tested by Bootstrap method. The method does not need to assume that the sample obeys a certain distribution, but reconstructs the sample distribution by random sampling with the return of the original sample (a total of 1000 samples are constructed in this study, each sample has a capacity of 614), and obtains the robust standard error of parameter estimation and the confidence interval of 95% deviation correction. If the confidence interval does not contain zero, it indicates statistical significance.

Results

Control and verification of common method variance

To control common method variance, this study used procedures such as adopting an anonymous method to investigate participants, scoring reversely, etc. After the data collection was completed, the Harman single-factor test was used to test common method deviation (Zhou & Long, 2004). The results showed that there were 11 eigenvalues greater than 1 without rotation, and the mutation rate interpretation of the first factor was 17.21%, which was less than the critical value of 40%, indicating that there was no obvious deviation of the common method in this study.

Descriptive statistics

The mean, standard deviation, and correlation coefficient of each variable are shown in Table 1. It can be found that parent–child attachment was significantly positively correlated with psychological resilience and online social support but negatively correlated with social anxiety. Psychological resilience was significantly positively correlated with online social support and negatively correlated with social anxiety. Finally, online social support is significantly negatively correlated with social anxiety.

Table 1.

Means, standard deviations, and correlation coefficients (n = 614).

Variable	M	SD	1	2	3	4
1. Parent–child attachment	3.62	0.90	1
2. Psychological resilience	4.61	1.39	0.79**	1
3. Online social support	3.15	0.80	0.63**	0.77**	1
4. Social anxiety	2.99	0.87	−0.54***	−0.64**	−0.51**	1

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

The relationship between parent–child attachment and social anxiety: A moderated mediation model

As shown in Table 2, parent–child attachment was negatively predicted social anxiety, while the interaction of parent–child attachment and online social support had no significant predictive effect on social anxiety in equation (1). In equations (2) and (3), the interaction of parent–child attachment and online social support had significant predictive effects on psychological resilience, and the main effect of psychological resilience on social anxiety was significant. At the same time, the main effect of parent–child attachment on psychological resilience was significant, and the interaction between psychological resilience and online social support had a significant predictive effect on social anxiety. This shows that a moderated mediation model exists in among parent–child attachment, psychological resilience, online social support, and social anxiety. Psychological resilience played a mediating role between parent–child attachment and social anxiety, while online social support moderated both the first half and second half of the mediation process.

Table 2.

The mediating effect of parental attachment on social anxiety.

Variables	Equation (1) (Criterion: Social anxiety)				Equation (2) (Criterion: Psychological resilience)				Equation (3) (Criterion: Social anxiety)
Variables	B	SE	β	95% CI	B	SE	β	95% CI	B	SE	β	95% CI
Parent-child attachment	−0.43	0.05	−0.43***	[−0.54, −0.32]	0.37	0.03	0.36***	[0.30, 0.44]	−0.24	0.05	−0.24***	[−0.36, −0.12]
Online social support	−0.26	0.04	−0.26***	[−0.37, −0.16]	0.45	0.03	0.45***	[0.40, 0.51]	0.03	0.05	0.03*	[−0.07, −0.12]
Online social support × Parent-child attachment	−0.04	0.04	−0.05	[−0.14, 0.04]	−0.21	0.02	−0.23***	[−0.26, −0.16]	0.04	0.06	0.04	[−0.18, 0.24]
Psychological resilience									−0.60	0.06	−0.60***	[−0.73, −0.48]
Online social support × Psychological resilience									−0.25	0.06	−0.28***	[−0.45, −0.01]
R ²			0.37***				0.76***				0.47***
F			89.29***				655.54***				90.02***

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001.

To explain the moderated mediation model better, online social support was divided into high and low groups with thresholds at one plus or minus standard deviation. The simple slope test was used to investigate the influence of online social support for the effect of parental attachment on psychological resilience and psychological resilience on social anxiety (see Figures 2 and 3). Figure 2 shows that parent–child attachment had a significant positive predictive effect on psychological resilience when the online social support was low (B_simple = 0.42, t = 2.57, p < 0.001). When the online social support was high, the positive predictive effect of parent–child attachment on psychological resilience was significantly reduced (B_simple = 0.22, t = 5.79, p < 0.001). Figure 3 shows that, when online social support was low, psychological resilience had a significant negative predictive effect on social anxiety (B_simple = −0.69, t=−6.67, p < 0.001). When online social support was high, the negative predictive effect of psychological resilience on social anxiety was significantly reduced (B_simple = −0.34, t = −6.31, p < 0.001).

Figure 2.

The moderating effect of online social support on psychological resilience in social anxiety.

Figure 3.

The moderating effect of online social support on parent–child attachment in psychological resilience.

Further testing of the integrated model showed that the model had a good fitting degree (χ²/df = 4.31, comparative fit index = 0.92, normed fit index = 0.91, goodness of fit index = 0.93, root mean square error of approximation = 0.065), as shown in Figure 4. Parent–child attachment had a significant negative predictive effect on social anxiety (γ = 0.45, p < 0.001), and online social support had a significant negative predictive effect on social anxiety (γ = −0.26, p < 0.001). Parent–child attachment had a significant positive predictive effect on psychological resilience (γ = 0.36, p < 0.001), while psychological resilience had a significant negative predictive effect on social anxiety (γ = −0.63, p < 0.001), indicating that psychological resilience played a partial mediating role between parent–child attachment and social anxiety. At the same time, the interaction between parent–child attachment and online social support has a significant negative impact on psychological resilience (γ = −0.26, p < 0.001), while psychological resilience and the interaction between psychological resilience and online social support had a significant negative impact on social anxiety (γ = −0.30, p < 0.001).

Figure 4.

A mediated effect model (R² represents the rate of variance interpretation).

To sum up, the mediation process of parent–child attachment affecting social anxiety through psychological resilience was moderated by online social support.

Discussion

This study found that there was a significant positive correlation between parent–child attachment and psychological resilience, a significant negative correlation between psychological resilience and social anxiety, and a significant negative correlation between parent–child attachment and social anxiety. That is to say, individuals with higher level of parent–child attachment have higher level of psychological resilience and lower level of social anxiety. On the contrary, individuals with lower level of parent–child attachment have lower level of psychological resilience and higher level of social anxiety. This shows that good parent–child relationship can effectively cultivate and enhance the individual’s psychological resilience and reduce the generation of social anxiety (Suveg, Jacob, & Payne, 2010). Conversely, college students who grow up in an environment of poor parent–child attachment may unconsciously learn poor social models, and more likely to adopt unhealthy interpersonal strategies when interacting with others, resulting in interpersonal tension and more social anxiety (Bonanno, Kennedy, Galatzer-Levy, Lude, & Elfström, 2012). In addition, this study also found that there was a significant negative correlation between online social support and college students’ social anxiety. The more social support the college students receive, the more they will be able to actively mobilize their own protection resources when they encounter negative social events in reality, thus reducing the risk of anxiety (Ji, 2013). In other words, high-level online social support can reduce social anxiety to some extent. Conversely, when college students with low online social support face negative social events, they simply avoid the problem itself, find difficult to overcome difficulties through their own strength, and have such a relatively poor self-recovery ability that they are often plagued by anxiety and fall into tense interpersonal relationships (G. Liu et al., 2017).

The results showed that, in college students, psychological resilience played a partial mediating role between parent–child attachment and social anxiety, which supports H1. The conclusion of this study confirm that good parent–child relationships can help individuals to resolve inchoate psychological conflicts, develop a good sense of trust and autonomy, and promote the formation and development of psychological resilience (Cooley, Buren, & Cole, 2010; Paradiso, Naridze, & Holm-Brown, 2012), thus improving the psychological endurance and resilience of individuals, helping individual better cope with interpersonal problems and reduce the risk of social anxiety. Compared with college students with high psychological resilience, college students with low psychological resilience are more vulnerable and sensitive (Poehlmann, Clements, & Abbeduto, 2005). It is difficult for them to fully mobilize positive psychological resources to cope with complex interpersonal relationships, which lead to intense interpersonal relationship, which is the direct cause of social anxiety (Naderi, Safarzadeh, & Mashak, 2011).

This study found that online social support moderated the mediation process of parent–child attachment affecting social anxiety through psychological resilience. The specific moderation process occurred in the first half and second halves of the mediation chain. That is, the influence of parent–child attachment on psychological resilience and psychological resilience on social anxiety are both moderated by online social support, which confirmed H2 and H3, but in the direct path of parent–child attachment on social anxiety, the moderating effect of online social support is not significant, so H4 is not valid. Compared with college students with high online social support, the psychological resilience of college students with low online social support is more affected by parent–child attachment. High online social support can effectively enhance the sense of belonging and self-identity of individuals and promote the formation and development of positive psychological qualities (Bockting, Miner, Swinburne Romine, Hamilton, & Coleman, 2013). On the contrary, individuals with low online social support could face more rejection of others, their need for love and belonging cannot be met, and the formed inferiority will hinder the development of psychological resilience (W. Zhang & Chen, 2009). Meanwhile, the main effect model of online social support pointed out parent–child attachment and online social support can complement each other to promote the formation of psychological resilience (Ghazwani, Khalil, & Ahmed, 2016). Therefore, this study speculated that the level of online social support affects the degree of satisfaction of individual emotional needs and thus affects the formation and development of psychological resilience. In addition, compared with the student with high online social support, the psychological resilience of individual with low online social support has a more significant negative predictive effect on social anxiety. The reason may be that the belonging and accepted needs of individuals with lower level of online social support are negatively impacted in online environment, so they may experience more social anxiety (Murberg & Bru, 2004). For college students with higher level of online social support, with the decreases of psychological resilience, the score of social anxiety increases slowly. This shows that online social support can moderate the direct impact of psychological quality on emotions, even if the level of psychological resilience is low, it will not directly affect the social anxiety, the research conclusions support the main effect model of online society support. The results of this study suggest that supporting and trying to understand others in online context can promote the development and improvement of college students’ psychological resilience and help them overcome social distress and resist negative emotions.

In theory, this study has explored the impact of parent–child attachment, psychological resilience, and online social support on college students’ social anxiety. On the one hand, it enriched the research works on social anxiety and provided theoretical guidance for the prevention and reduction of college students’ social anxiety. On the other hand, it also confirmed the developmental contextualism indirectly and demonstrated the complex interaction between internal and external factors of individual on emotions. In addition, this study also innovatively extended the influence of social support to emerging online context, paving the way for future research on online social support. In practice, the results of this study make vital sense to the interventions and prevention of college students’ social anxiety. First, in terms of family, parents should put more effort to communicate with their children, trust them and provide an excellent family environment for them, strive to meet their needs of being respected and understood, and consciously cultivate positive psychological qualities of their children (such as psychological resilience). Second, in terms of colleges, colleges can set up psychological resilience training courses or organize group counseling activities with the theme of psychological resilience to improve the level of psychological resilience of students. Finally, regarding the social aspects, the government and media should appeal netizens to create a warm and comfortable network environment for college students to promote their physical and psychological health.

The following limitations of this study need to be improved in future studies. First, a cross-sectional research method was adopted in this study, which could not infer a causal relationship between parent–child attachment and social anxiety. In the future, longitudinal research and experimental methods can be combined to explore the mechanism of parent–child attachment affecting college students’ social anxiety. Second, this study only investigated the impact of online social support on social anxiety. Future research works could combine offline social support (such as peer support) with online social support to investigate its role in parent–child attachment and social anxiety. Third, although there was no common method deviation after data verification, the results still may not completely match the actual situation due to the influence of social approval and other factors. In order to improve the reliability and validity of studies, multiple methods can be used to collect data simultaneously in the future.

Conclusion

The main conclusions of this study are the following:

Parent–child attachment was significantly negatively correlated with college students’ social anxiety and was significantly positively correlated with psychological resilience and online social support.

Psychological resilience played a partial mediating role in the process of parent–child attachment affecting college students’ social anxiety.

Online social support regulated the first half and second half of the mediation process in which parent–child attachment affected college students’ social anxiety through psychological resilience.

Footnotes

Article Notes

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