Social anxiety in children can be influenced by their parents through various mechanisms. Genetic factors play a role, but environmental influences are also significant.
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.
Additionally, parents’ concerns about their child being negatively evaluated by others (fear of negative child evaluation) may lead to behaviors that increase the child’s social anxiety.
Understanding these parental influences is crucial for developing effective interventions and prevention strategies.
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
Key Points
- Parents’ fear of negative child evaluation (FNCE) partially mediated the relationship between parent social anxiety and child social anxiety in adolescents aged 13-16.
- Parents’ fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and self- and child-referent interpretation biases did not mediate the relationship between parent and child social anxiety.
- Offline measures of interpretation bias yielded stronger associations with parent and child social anxiety compared to online measures.
- The study provides further support for the role of FNCE in the intergenerational transmission of social anxiety from parents to children.
- Limitations include the cross-sectional design, reliance on parent report only, and low reliability of some interpretation bias measures.
- The findings suggest FNCE may be a promising target for interventions aimed at reducing social anxiety transmission in families.
Rationale
Social anxiety disorder is 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 a cross-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
- Child Social Anxiety: Measured using the social anxiety subscale of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED).
- Parental Social Anxiety: Measured with the Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI-18).
- Fear of Negative Evaluation: Measured with the Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (BFNE).
- Fear of Negative Child Evaluation: Measured with the Fear of Negative Child Evaluation Questionnaire (FNCE-Q).
- Interpretation Bias: Measured using scenario completion and memory recognition tasks for both self-referent and child-referent situations.
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:
- Parent social anxiety was significantly associated with child social anxiety, parents’ FNE, and parents’ FNCE.
- Offline measures of interpretation bias showed stronger associations with social anxiety measures compared to online measures.
- Exploratory analyses suggested potential differences in the roles of mothers’ and fathers’ FNCE.
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.
This extends previous research by showing that FNCE plays a role not only in infancy and middle childhood but also in adolescence.
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.
This suggests that parents’ concerns about their children being negatively evaluated by others may be more influential in the transmission of social anxiety than parents’ concerns about themselves or their tendencies to interpret ambiguous situations negatively.
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:
- Longitudinal studies to establish causal relationships between parent and child social anxiety and potential mediators.
- Experimental studies manipulating parents’ FNCE to examine its effects on child social anxiety.
- Investigating potential differences in the roles of mothers’ and fathers’ FNCE in larger samples.
- Developing more reliable measures of interpretation bias, especially for online assessments.
Strengths
This study had several methodological strengths, including:
- The study examined multiple potential mediators in parallel, providing a comprehensive view of factors involved in social anxiety transmission.
- Both online and offline measures of interpretation bias were used, allowing for comparison between immediate and reflective interpretation processes.
- The sample included both mothers and fathers, enabling exploratory analyses of potential parental differences.
- The study focused on adolescents, an age group where social anxiety typically peaks.
Limitations
This study also had several methodological limitations, including:
- The cross-sectional design limits causal inferences about the relationships between variables.
- All measures, including child social anxiety, were based on parent report only, which may introduce bias.
- The sample was predominantly Caucasian, limiting generalizability to other cultural groups.
- Some interpretation bias measures had low reliability, potentially affecting the results.
- The sample size was somewhat smaller than initially planned, which may have limited statistical power for detecting smaller effects.
Implications
The results have significant implications for understanding the intergenerational transmission of social anxiety and for developing interventions.
The finding that parents’ FNCE partially mediates the relationship between parent and child social anxiety suggests that targeting parents’ concerns about their children being negatively evaluated by others could be an effective strategy for reducing social anxiety in families.
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
Keep Learning
Socratic questions for a college class to discuss this paper
- How might cultural differences influence the intergenerational transmission of social anxiety and the role of FNCE?
- What are the potential long-term consequences of high parental FNCE on adolescent development beyond social anxiety?
- How might the age of the child influence the relationship between parental social anxiety, FNCE, and child social anxiety?
- What ethical considerations should be taken into account when designing interventions targeting parental FNCE?
- How might the increasing use of social media and digital communication affect the relevance of FNCE in today’s adolescents?
- In what ways might the COVID-19 pandemic have influenced parental FNCE and its effects on adolescent social anxiety?
- How could the findings of this study inform school-based interventions for adolescent social anxiety?
- What are the potential implications of these findings for parenting practices and parent education programs?
- How might the role of FNCE differ in families with children who have developmental disorders or other mental health conditions?
- What neurobiological mechanisms might underlie the relationship between parental FNCE and adolescent social anxiety?
