Year: 2011
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Shy children are at risk for later maladjustment due to ineffective coping with \nsocial conflicts through reliance on avoidance, rather than approach-focused, coping. The \npurpose of the present study was to explore whether the relation between shyness and \nchildren's coping was mediated by attributions and moderated by personality selftheories and gender. Participants included a classroom-based sample of 175 children (93 \nboys), aged 9-13 years (M = 10.11 years, SD = 0.92). Children completed self-report \nmeasures assessing shyness, attributions, personality self-theories and coping strategies. \nResults showed that negative attribution biases partially mediated the negative relations \nbetween shyness and social support seeking, as well as problem-solving, and the positive \nassociation between shyness and externalizing. Moreover, self-theories moderated the \nrelation between shyness and internalizing coping at the trend level, such that the positive \nrelation was exacerbated among entity-oriented children to a greater degree than \nincrementally-oriented children. In terms of gender differences, shyness was related to \nlower use of social support and problem-solving among incrementally-oriented boys and \nentity-oriented girls. Thus, shy children's perceptions of social conflicts as the outcome \nof an enduring trait (e.g., social incompetence) may partially explain why they do not act \nassertively and aggress as a means of social coping. Furthermore, entity-oriented beliefs \nmay exacerbate shy children's reliance on internalizing actions, such as crying. Although \nan incrementally-oriented stance may enhance shy girls' reliance on approach strategies, \nit does not appear to serve the same protective role for shy boys. Therefore, copingoriented interventions may need to focus on restructuring shy children's social cognitions \nand implementing gender-specific programming for their personality biases.
Author: Andrea Markovic
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2794900095