Investigating the relationships between perceived parental attitudes, social anxiety and self-construals

The main purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between self-constructs, perceived parental attitudes and social anxiety. A second aim was to examine the relative importance of each of the parental attitudes in predicting the level of social anxiety. The third aim of the study was to investigate the effect of self-constructs (autonomous self, relational self and autonomous-relational self) on perceived parental attitudes and social anxiety level and to analyze whether these three variables differ in terms of various demographic characteristics. Within the scope of these aims, data were collected from 516 participants (284 females, 232 males) between the ages of 18-43 (284 females, 232 males) who continue their education in various undergraduate and associate degree departments of a state university. Personal Information Form, Young Parenting Scale, Autonomous-Relational Self Scale and Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale were administered to the participants. The results of Pearson correlation analysis conducted to test the hypotheses related to the main purpose of the study reveal that social anxiety has a significant positive relationship with negative parental attitudes; relational self and autonomous-relational self scores have a significant negative relationship with some negative parental attitudes; and autonomous self has a significant positive relationship with some negative parental attitudes. According to the results of the stepwise regression analysis in which the variables predicting social anxiety for the second purpose were examined, it was found that Emotionally Depriving, Overprotective, Pessimistic/ Anxious and Closed to Change/Suppressing Emotions parental attitudes predicted social anxiety positively, while Autonomous Self and Autonomous-Relational Self scores predicted social anxiety negatively. According to the t-test and ANOVA test results conducted within the scope of the third aim of the study, it was determined that some perceived negative parental attitudes and social anxiety scores differed between groups with different levels of self-constructs. In addition, it was concluded that social anxiety scores differed according to gender and number of siblings, but not according to income level, autonomous-relational self, one of the sub-dimensions of self-constructs, differed according to gender, and the three sub-dimensions of self-constructs did not differ according to place of residence.