Shyness and social adjustment in Chinese college students: A moderated mediation of alienation and school connectedness
- PDF / 339,197 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 93 Downloads / 185 Views
Shyness and social adjustment in Chinese college students: A moderated mediation of alienation and school connectedness Yujie Gao 1 & Wenxian Zhang 1 & Qiuyue Deng 1 & Changlin Sun 1 & Fengqiang Gao 1 & Yingmin Chen 1 Accepted: 11 September 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Existing studies have explored the relationship between shyness and specific indicators of social adjustment of children or middle school students, indicating that individuals with shyness have social maladjustment. However, few studies have examined the overall social adjustment and underlying mechanisms of college students. Therefore, the present study explored the influence of shyness on the overall social adjustment of college students and its underlying mechanism from the perspective of individuals’ interaction with their environment. 1201 participants (Mage = 19.43, SD = 1.40) from two universities in China were measured using the College Student Shyness Scale, Adolescent Alienation Scale, School Connectedness Scale, and Chinese College Student Adjustment Scale. The results showed that shyness was negatively associated with social adjustment and that alienation partially mediated the relationship between them. Moreover, this mediation effect was moderated by school connectedness. Specifically, school connectedness moderated the second stage of the mediating process, that is, school connectedness could effectively alleviate the social maladjustment caused by alienation, and the protection effect of this moderation on low alienation was more obvious. These findings enrich the research on social adjustment of college students, and show that reducing alienation and strengthening school connectedness can alleviate the maladjustment of shy college students. Keywords Shyness . Social adjustment . Alienation . School connectedness . College students
Introduction As a kind of social existence, adapting to society is not only the way of individual survival, but also the external manifestation of individual mental health. Social adjustment refers to individuals’ interaction with their social environment, by adapting to the environment, regulating themselves, or changing the environment, and ultimately achieving a harmonious and balanced dynamic relationship with the social environment. This is a comprehensive reflection of individuals’ psychological and social coordination of social life (Zou et al. 2015). College students are in the transition from adolescence to adulthood and from school-based learning to entering the society and working, which belongs to the socialized
* Fengqiang Gao [email protected] * Yingmin Chen [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, Shandong Normal University, No. 88, East Wenhua Road, Jinan 250014, Shandong, China
psychological moratorium (Erikson 1968). During the buffer period, individuals can further explore themselves and integrate personality. Compared with primary and secondary schools, social adjustment at the college stage has a richer connotation a
Data Loading...
