Transdiagnostic factors in social anxiety: Emotion regulation and intolerance of uncertainty

This thesis aims to examine social anxiety disorder from a transdiagnostic perspective rather than a diagnosis-focused approach, by investigating its relationship with emotion regulation and intolerance of uncertainty. The processes that are commonly observed across various psychological disorders—such as initiating, maintaining, recurring, and contributing to recovery—are defined in the literature as transdiagnostic factors. Social anxiety disorder, one of the most commonly observed anxiety disorders among young adults, is a psychological condition that has the potential to significantly affect individuals' quality of life and daily functioning. In this regard, the general aim of the study is to evaluate social anxiety in terms of transdiagnostic factors such as emotion regulation and intolerance of uncertainty. The sub-problems of the study include determining the prevalence of social anxiety among young adults, examining the research variables in relation to demographic factors, evaluating the relationships between the variables and their subdimensions, and analyzing individuals with different levels of social anxiety in terms of emotion regulation and intolerance of uncertainty. In this research, a quantitative research approach was adopted within the framework of the stated objectives, and a relational design was used. The sample of the study consisted of 642 young adults (418 women) aged between 18 and 30, with a mean age of 21.29 (SD = 2.89). Participants were reached through the snowball sampling method. In this study, the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) was used to measure social anxiety levels, the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale–Short Form (DERS-16) to measure emotion regulation, and the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (IUS-12) to measure intolerance of uncertainty. Frequency and percentage calculations were used to examine the prevalence of social anxiety, while relationships among the variables were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficients. The examination of individuals with different levels of social anxiety in relation to the study variables was conducted using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Since the variables showed significant differences by gender, Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was conducted to control for the effect of gender. As a result of the analyses conducted in the study, the prevalence of social anxiety in this young adult sample was found to be 29% (a score of 65 and above). Among the variables examined, only gender showed a significant difference in relation to the demographic variables. Significant positive correlations were found for all relationships between social anxiety, emotion regulation, intolerance of uncertainty, and their subdimensions (p < .001). The ANOVA results indicated that intolerance of uncertainty and emotion regulation significantly differed according to levels of social anxiety. In the ANCOVA analysis, in which the effect of gender was controlled, social anxiety levels were found to have statistically significant effects on both variables (p < .001). The findings obtained from the study were evaluated and discussed within the framework of the existing literature.