Understanding social anxiety through adolescents' perceptions of interparental conflict and parental rejection

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to understand the possible relation of social anxiety to adolescents’ perception of intense, frequent and unresolved interparental conflict and parental rejection. The effect of gender on these relations and on social anxiety was also investigated. Additionally, the relationship between adolescents’ perceptions of interparental conflict and parental rejection were examined. The sample consisted of 406 students from five high schools in Istanbul. All were from intact families with moderate SES levels. For data collection, “Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale”, “Children’s Perception of Interparental Conflict Scale”, and “Parental Acceptance- Rejection Questionnaire/Child Short Form” were used. The reliability study of the Turkish version of PARQ/Child Short Form was carried out by the researcher and it was shown that it has sufficient reliability. The findings indicated that intense and frequent perception of interparental conflict and parental rejection were associated to social anxiety whereas unresolved interparental conflict was not related to social anxiety. Although no difference was found between females’ and males’ social anxiety levels, the findings showed the importance of the parents’ and the child’s gender in understanding social anxiety; it was found that perception of interparental conflict and parental rejection were predictive factors for only males’ social anxiety levels and perceived paternal rejection plays more important role than perception of mother rejection in understanding social anxiety. Furthermore, it was shown that there is a significant positive correlation between perception of interparental conflict and perception of paternal and maternal rejection for both males and females.