Friendships moderate psychosocial maladjustment in socially anxious early adolescents

Abstract

Close mutual friendships may help protect socially anxious early adolescents against concurrent psychosocial risks. This study investigated whether close mutual friendships moderated associations among social anxiety and several indices of psychosocial maladjustment (loneliness, peer victimization, and low social self-efficacy) in early adolescence, independent of social skills. Participants were 383 sixth and seventh grade students, and data included self, peer, and teacher reports. Results supported the moderating role of mutual friendships across measures of psychosocial maladjustment, and evidence for moderation varied by level of friendship closeness. Specifically, associations linking social anxiety with loneliness and self-reported victimization were attenuated among early adolescents with more close friendships, as compared to early adolescents with fewer close friendships. The association between social anxiety and lower social self-efficacy was attenuated among early adolescents with more secondary friendships, as compared to early adolescents with fewer secondary friendships. Findings are considered in the developmental context of early adolescence, and the potential benefits of including friendship-building as part of interventions for socially anxious youth are discussed.

Introduction

Social anxiety is characterized by excessive distress in social situations due to intense fears of negative evaluation (Beidel & Turner, 2007). Peer interaction is a common source of discomfort among socially anxious children and adolescents (Rao et al., 2007). In peer contexts, socially anxious youth often exhibit avoidant behavior and experience cognitive distress (e.g., vigilance for signs of disapproval) and physiological arousal (e.g., heart rate elevation; Beidel and Turner, 2007, Morris, 2001).

Rates of social anxiety climb in the early adolescent years, concurrent with changes in the social organization of schools and the corresponding increased size and complexity of the peer group, and with the emergence of abstract reasoning processes that support anticipatory and self-reflective rumination about peer interactions (Parker, Rubin, Erath, Wojslawowicz, & Buskirk, 2006). The peak onset of social anxiety disorder, or social phobia, is early to mid adolescence (Beidel, Turner, & Morris, 1999). Many adolescents with social anxiety disorder experience severe and unremitting adjustment problems, including educational underachievement, peer relationship problems, substance abuse, and other mood disorders (Beidel and Turner, 2007, Pine et al., 1998).

Concurrent psychosocial problems, such as feelings of loneliness, low social self-efficacy, and peer victimization, may exacerbate the suffering of socially anxious youth. Indeed, in a recent investigation, moderately socially withdrawn preadolescents with co-occurring social problems (e.g., peer exclusion, friendship instability) became increasingly withdrawn across the middle school years, whereas more withdrawn preadolescents without these social problems became less withdrawn over the same period (Oh et al., 2008). To optimize prevention and intervention, we must understand factors that exacerbate or attenuate the risk for more pervasive maladjustment among youth with elevated social anxiety. In the present study, we investigated the interaction between social anxiety and mutual friendship to shed light on whether mutual friendships may protect socially anxious early adolescents against broader psychosocial maladjustment, including social cognitions of low social self-efficacy, feelings of loneliness, and experiences of peer victimization.

Social anxiety in childhood and adolescence is associated with difficulties in cognitive, emotional, and experiential dimensions of social adjustment. For example, socially anxious youth are susceptible to social schemes of powerlessness and inadequacy—thinking that they are unable to cope effectively with social situations and social provocations. In normative samples, levels of social anxiety have been linked with negative social performance expectations and negative appraisals following social performance (Cartwright-Hatton et al., 2003, Erath et al., 2007). Likewise, in clinical samples, socially phobic youth report more negative social performance expectations and more negative outcome expectations prior to social-evaluative tasks, compared to non-anxious youth (Alfano et al., 2006, Morgan and Banerjee, 2006, Spence et al., 1999). These self-perceptions of low social efficacy are key indices of psychosocial maladjustment because social cognitions are tightly intertwined with emotions and shape behavior in social contexts (Crick and Dodge, 1994, Harvey et al., 2001).

Socially anxious youth also report elevated social isolation and loneliness (Beidel et al., 2007, Strauss et al., 1988). Their feelings of loneliness may stem in part from self-initiated social avoidance due to cognitive distress and physiological arousal in peer contexts (Rubin & Burgess, 2001). Feelings of loneliness may also be related to peer responses such as hostile rebuff and verbal and physical harassment (Storch, Brassard, & Masia Warner, 2003). These victimization experiences occur at relatively high rates among socially anxious youth (La Greca and Harrison, 2005, Storch et al., 2003, Strauss et al., 1987), and the association between social anxiety and peer victimization has been conceptualized as reciprocal. Avoidant and submissive behaviors may mark socially anxious youth as easy targets for peer harassment (Erath et al., 2007, Hodges et al., 1997) and, conversely, experiences of victimization exacerbate their social fears (Storch et al., 2005, Vernberg et al., 1992).

Although loneliness, victimization, and low social self-efficacy are correlated with social anxiety, not all socially anxious youth experience these concurrent psychosocial problems (Crick and Ladd, 1993, McClure and Pine, 2006). For some adolescents, social anxiety may be more circumscribed. That is, although they experience significant fears and discomfort in certain social situations, they nonetheless manage to preserve social efficacy, establish positive relationships, and avoid negative outcomes often associated with social anxiety. For example, despite the association between social anxiety and low social self-efficacy, Alfano et al. (2006) found that only 20% of socially phobic adolescents reported negative performance thoughts during a social interaction task. In addition, Flanagan, Erath, and Bierman (2008) corroborated the well-replicated association between social anxiety and peer victimization, but also reported that about 50% of early adolescents with elevated social anxiety did not experience peer victimization. It is critical to understand what differentiates socially anxious adolescents who experience broader patterns of psychosocial maladjustment (e.g., concurrent loneliness, peer victimization, or low social self-efficacy) from those who do not; mutual friendships may play a key protective role.

In general, having friends serves as a protective factor in childhood and adolescence (Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995). For example, friendships can buffer against psychosocial maladjustment associated with risk factors such as harsh discipline (Schwartz, Dodge, Pettit, Bates, & the Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group, 2000), social skill deficits (Fox & Boulton, 2006), general internalizing problems, and peer victimization (Hodges et al., 1999, Hodges et al., 1997).

Sullivan's (1953) theory of personality development assigned special importance to close mutual friendships, or chumships, in late childhood through early adolescence. According to Sullivan's perspective, close friendships promote self-validation and afford protection against negative circumstances by providing affection, companionship, and instrumental and emotional support (Sullivan, 1953). Indeed, children with close friendships are less likely to experience loneliness (Nangle, Erdley, Newman, Mason, & Carpenter, 2003). Childhood friends have been observed to “stick up” for their friends during victimization incidents and to distract their friends following victimization episodes (Fox & Boulton, 2006), and seeking support from friends in the context of peer victimization is associated with reduced victimization over time (Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1997). Furthermore, in difficult situations with friends, withdrawn children report more benign social information processing (e.g., less self-blame), compared to difficult situations with unfamiliar peers (Burgess, Wojslawowicz, Rubin, Rose-Krasnor, & Booth-LaForce, 2006). These supportive features of friendship may become particularly critical around the transition to middle school, when early adolescents face a larger and less protective social context, as well as increases in peer victimization and exclusive groups. Early adolescent friendships may be well-suited to provide support and protection against these social challenges in middle school due to the increased intimacy that characterizes friendship during this developmental period (Fox and Boulton, 2006, Sullivan, 1953).

Close friendships (i.e., peers mutually regarded as “very best” or “good” friends) may offer an especially comfortable and protective relationship context for socially anxious adolescents, as compared to friendships that exist primarily by virtue of shared membership in a large social network of friends (Schneider & Tessier, 2007). Close mutual friendships are typically characterized by higher levels of trust, support, and mutual affection than other friendships (Bukowski, Newcomb, & Hartup, 1998). Furthermore, as compared to secondary friendships, close friendships may be unlikely to provoke fears of negative evaluation and anxious arousal, and thus more conducive to pleasurable interaction that bolsters social self-efficacy and reduces feelings of loneliness and victimization. The intimate features of close friendships may take on heightened importance for socially anxious adolescents, whose excessive discomfort in social situations may impede the benefits that secondary friendships would otherwise provide, requiring anxious youth to rely on closer friendships for companionship and support.

To our knowledge, only one prior study has considered friendship as a moderator of psychosocial problems associated with social anxiety. Greco and Morris (2005) found low levels of social anxiety among girls with few negative friendship qualities (e.g., low conflict) and low or high social preference, suggesting that low levels of conflict in friendship may protect against low social preference, which otherwise would be associated with high social anxiety.

We build on this study in several ways. First, the present study concerns early adolescence, when levels of social anxiety and social distress escalate and friendships become especially salient (Parker et al., 2006). We considered several indices of subjective psychosocial maladjustment (loneliness, victimization, social self-efficacy), as well as peer-reported victimization, as outcome variables. Thus, we examined whether friendships can moderate associations linking social anxiety not only with subjective psychological distress and perceived peer relationship problems, but also with overt maltreatment by the peer group. We also compared whether the moderating role of friendship varied by the level of friendship closeness (i.e., close friends versus secondary friends), assessed via mutual nominations of target participants and their peers. In addition, we controlled for teacher-reported social skills in the present study because social skills and friendship are reciprocally related. Thus, we controlled for the possibility that social skill differences between early adolescents with higher or lower levels of friendship account for the protective role of friendship. We also controlled for sex, due to its potential association with key constructs. Specifically, girls tend to report higher social anxiety (Inderbitzen et al., 1997, La Greca and Lopez, 1998) and higher friendship closeness (Parker et al., 2006). Finally, as exploratory analyses, we tested whether the moderating role of mutual friendships varied by sex via three-way interactions among social anxiety, mutual friendships, and sex.

We hypothesized that close mutual friendships would moderate the association between social anxiety and psychosocial maladjustment (i.e., loneliness, peer-reported victimization, self-reported victimization, and low social self-efficacy). More specifically, we expected that associations linking social anxiety with indices of psychosocial maladjustment would be attenuated among early adolescents with higher numbers of close mutual friendships, but not necessarily attenuated among adolescents who had larger networks of “secondary” mutual friendships (i.e., peers mutually regarded as “remaining” friends, but not close friends).