Parents with social anxiety may model anxious behaviors, inadvertently reinforcing their children’s fears. They might also overprotect their children, limiting opportunities for social exposure and skill development.
Parents’ own fears and biases can shape how they interpret social situations for their children, potentially transmitting negative expectations.
Understanding these parental influences is crucial for developing effectiveinterventions and prevention strategies.
Key Points
Rationale
Social anxiety disorderis one of the most prevalent psychological disorders, with a lifetime prevalence of 8.6% in adolescents aged 13-17 in the US (Kessler et al., 2012).
It can have serious long-term adverse effects on individuals’ social and academic functioning (Bögels et al., 2011; de Lijster et al., 2018). Research shows that anxiety tends to run in families (Murray et al., 2008) and parent-child social anxiety is strongly associated (e.g., Lieb et al., 2000; Telman et al., 2018).
While genetic factors play a role (Scaini et al., 2014), other parental influences contribute to the development and maintenance of social anxiety in children (e.g., Ahmadzadeh et al., 2019; Eley et al., 2015).
Parents’ fear of negative child evaluation (FNCE) has been proposed as a factor linking parental to child social anxiety (Schreier & Heinrichs, 2010).
Additionally, parents’ fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and interpretation biases may play a role. However, previous studies have not examined these factors in parallel.
This study aimed to investigate the roles of parents’ FNE, FNCE, and self- and child-referent interpretation biases in explaining the intergenerational transmission of social anxiety in adolescents.
Method
Procedure
The study used across-sectional design. Parents completed online questionnaires and interpretation bias tasks.
Sample
179 parents (57.54% mothers, 41.90% fathers, 0.56% non-binary) of adolescents aged 13-16 years were recruited through Prolific.
The mean age of their children was 14.03 years (SD=0.96).
Most parents had British (39.66%), American (20.11%), or South African (12.29%) backgrounds and identified as Caucasian (80.45%).
Measures
Statistical measures
Correlation analyses and mediation analyses using the PROCESS macro for SPSS were conducted.
Results
Hypothesis 1:Parents’ FNE and self-referent interpretation bias would mediate the relation between parent and child social anxiety.
Result:Not supported. Neither parents’ FNE nor their self-referent interpretation bias (online or offline) mediated the relationship.
Hypothesis 2:Parents’ FNCE and child-referent interpretation bias would mediate the relation between parent and child social anxiety.
Result:Partially supported. Parents’ FNCE partially mediated the relationship between parent and child social anxiety. Child-referent interpretation bias did not mediate the relationship.
Additional findings:
Insight
The key finding of this study is that parents’ fear of negative child evaluation (FNCE) partially explains the relationship between parent and child social anxiety in adolescents.
The study is particularly informative as it examined multiple potential mediators (FNE, FNCE, and interpretation biases) in parallel, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the factors involved in the intergenerational transmission of social anxiety.
Interestingly, parents’ fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and interpretation biases did not mediate the relationship between parent and child social anxiety.
The findings also highlight the importance of measurement methods in interpretation bias research.
Offline measures of interpretation bias showed stronger associations with social anxiety compared to online measures, suggesting that reflective processes may play a more significant role in social anxiety than immediate interpretations.
Future research could focus on:
Strengths
This study had several methodological strengths, including:
Limitations
This study also had several methodological limitations, including:
Implications
The results have significant implications for understanding the intergenerational transmission of social anxiety and for developing interventions.
Clinical interventions could focus on helping parents manage their FNCE, potentially through cognitive-behavioral techniques or psychoeducation about social anxiety.
This approach might be particularly beneficial for adolescents, as the study shows FNCE plays a role even at this developmental stage.
The lack of mediation effects for parents’ FNE and interpretation biases suggests that interventions focusing solely on these factors may be less effective in reducing intergenerational transmission of social anxiety.
However, more research is needed to confirm these findings, especially given the limitations of the interpretation bias measures used in this study.
The potential differences between mothers’ and fathers’ FNCE effects, though exploratory, highlight the importance of considering both parents in research and interventions related to child social anxiety.
References
Primary reference
Dülger, M., Van Bockstaele, B., Majdandžić, M., & de Vente, W. (2024). Intergenerational transmission of social anxiety: The role of parents’ fear of negative child evaluation and their self-referent and child-referent interpretation biases.Cognitive Therapy and Research.Advance online publication.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-024-10490-0
Other references
Ahmadzadeh, Y. I., Eley, T. C., Leve, L. D., Shaw, D. S., Natsuaki, M. N., Reiss, D., … & McAdams, T. A. (2019). Anxiety in the family: A genetically informed analysis of transactional associations between mother, father and child anxiety symptoms.Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,60(12), 1269-1277.https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13068
Bögels, S., Stevens, J., & Majdandžić, M. (2011). Parenting and social anxiety: Fathers’ versus mothers’ influence on their children’s anxiety in ambiguous social situations.Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry,52(5), 599-606.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02345.x
de Lijster, J. M., Dieleman, G. C., Utens, E. M., Dierckx, B., Wierenga, M., Verhulst, F. C., & Legerstee, J. S. (2018). Social and academic functioning in adolescents with anxiety disorders: A systematic review.Journal of affective disorders,230, 108-117.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2018.01.008
Eley, T. C., McAdams, T. A., Rijsdijk, F. V., Lichtenstein, P., Narusyte, J., Reiss, D., … & Neiderhiser, J. M. (2015). The intergenerational transmission of anxiety: a children-of-twins study.American Journal of Psychiatry,172(7), 630-637.https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2015.14070818
Kessler, R. C., Petukhova, M., Sampson, N. A., Zaslavsky, A. M., & Wittchen, H. U. (2012). Twelve‐month and lifetime prevalence and lifetime morbid risk of anxiety and mood disorders in the United States.International journal of methods in psychiatric research,21(3), 169-184.https://doi.org/10.1002/mpr.1359
Lieb, R., Wittchen, H. U., Höfler, M., Fuetsch, M., Stein, M. B., & Merikangas, K. R. (2000). Parental psychopathology, parenting styles, and the risk of social phobia in offspring: a prospective-longitudinal community study.Archives of general psychiatry,57(9), 859-866.
Murray, L., De Rosnay, M., Pearson, J., Bergeron, C., Schofield, E., Royal‐Lawson, M., & Cooper, P. J. (2008). Intergenerational transmission of social anxiety: The role of social referencing processes in infancy.Child development,79(4), 1049-1064.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2008.01175.x
Scaini, S., Belotti, R., & Ogliari, A. (2014). Genetic and environmental contributions to social anxiety across different ages: A meta-analytic approach to twin data.Journal of anxiety disorders,28(7), 650-656.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2014.07.002
Schreier, S. S., & Heinrichs, N. (2010). Parental fear of negative child evaluation in child social anxiety.Behaviour research and therapy,48(12), 1186-1193.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2010.09.001
Telman, L. G., van Steensel, F. J., Maric, M., & Bögels, S. M. (2018). What are the odds of anxiety disorders running in families? A family study of anxiety disorders in mothers, fathers, and siblings of children with anxiety disorders.European child & adolescent psychiatry,27(5), 615-624. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-017-1076-x
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Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education
Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.
