The role of psychosocial factors in social anxiety: A structural equation modeling approach

Social anxiety disorder is one of the most common psychological disorders. The purpose of this study was to investigate the structural relationships between psychosocial factors affecting social anxiety in which elements such as authoritarian parenting, emotion regulation, anxiety sensitivity, behavioral avoidance, perceived social support, and rumination examined. The present study was correlational with path analysis approach in which variables measured through the implementation of social anxiety symptoms questionnaire, parenting styles, difficulty setting in emotion regulation, anxiety sensitivity scale, multidimensional scales of perceived social support, Cognitive-behavioral avoidance scale and ruminal response scale on 410 (210 females and 200 males) students of University of Tabriz. Obtained Data analyzed through AMOS 23 and SPSS 21 statistical software. The analysis shows that the Authoritarian parenting style, weakness in emotion regulation and anxiety sensitivity with a high degree of significance (P <0.001) affect social anxiety and Social anxiety also significantly affects the lack of perceived social support, avoidance of behavior and rumination. Also, the values of fitting indices of the final model showed the optimal fit of the proposed model. According to the finding authoritarian parenting style as a beginning factor how can, directly and indirectly, produce short and long-term maladaptive consequences in areas such as emotion regulation, anxiety sensitivity, behavioral avoidance, perceived social support and most important of all social anxiety.