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Sad, Scared, or Rejected? A Short-Term Longitudinal Study of the Predictors of Social Avoidance in Chinese Children

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Abstract

The goal of the present study was to empirically examine different conceptual mechanisms previously postulated to underlie the development of social avoidance in childhood. Participants were N = 601 children (321 boys, 280 girls) attending elementary schools (Mage = 10.21 years) and middle schools (Mage = 12.77 years) in Shanghai, P.R. China. Measures of motivations for social withdrawal (shyness, unsociability, social avoidance) and socio-emotional adjustment were collected using self-reports and peer nominations at two time-points separated by 9 months. Results from cross-lagged panel analyses indicated that: (1) social avoidance and symptoms of social anxiety were not reciprocally related over time; (2) Time 1 social avoidance predicted incremental change in Time 2 peer problems (whereas Time 1 peer problems did not predict incremental change in Time 2 social avoidance); and (3) Time 1 symptoms of depression significantly predicted incremental change in Time 2 social avoidance (whereas Time 1 social avoidance did not predict incremental change in Time 2 symptoms of depression). These results provide evidence in support of depressive symptoms (but not symptoms of social anxiety or peer problems) as a salient predictor of social avoidance. Results are discussed in terms of the development and implications of social avoidance in Chinese culture.

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Notes

  1. This policy was changed in 2010 and Chinese parents have since been allowed to have more than one child.

  2. Of note, there is one item in this version of the CDI that can be viewed as a general assessment of social motivations (i.e., “I like being with people”). The content of this item may potentially overlap with the content of measures of social withdrawal. Accordingly, we recomputed a 13-item version of the CDI (removing this item) and re-ran all analyses. The pattern of results was unchanged. Accordingly, we report all analyses with the complete measure of depression herein, in order to allow for a more direct comparison with previous research.

  3. Thank you to an anonymous reviewer for this insightful postulation.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the children for their participation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, 200234, China

    Xuechen Ding & Dan Li

  2. Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

    Robert J. Coplan & Laura L. Ooi

  3. College of Psychology and Sociology, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, China

    Xinmei Deng

  4. School of Psychology and Cognitive Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China

    Biao Sang

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  1. Xuechen Ding
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  2. Robert J. Coplan
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  3. Xinmei Deng
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  4. Laura L. Ooi
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  5. Dan Li
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Correspondence to Dan Li or Biao Sang.

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Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31371043), the Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of the Ministry of Education in China (17YJC190002), and the Project funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2017M621508).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Ding, X., Coplan, R.J., Deng, X. et al. Sad, Scared, or Rejected? A Short-Term Longitudinal Study of the Predictors of Social Avoidance in Chinese Children. J Abnorm Child Psychol 47, 1265–1276 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-018-0476-9

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