Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 PhD Student in Educational Psychology, Department of Psychology, Ahvaz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahvaz, Iran.

2 Assistant Professor, Faculty member, Department of Psychology, Ahvaz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahvaz, Iran.

3 Associated Professor Faculty member, Department of Psychology, Ahvaz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahvaz, Iran.

4 Assistant Professor Faculty member, Department of Psychology, Ahvaz Branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahvaz, Iran.

10.22055/psy.2022.40149.2802

Abstract

Introduction
Adolescence is referred to as a dynamic and active period of each person's life, and the major part of a person's personality is formed in this period. Undoubtedly, the importance of the adolescent developmental period cannot be denied. Thus, during adolescence, a person may encounter problems in various areas of individual, family, psychological, emotional, social, and health. Although the prevailing view among researchers is that most people go through the developmental stage of adolescence and the unstable psychological and emotional states of that stage in good health, recent research suggests that the number of adolescents with symptoms of behavioral disorders or who express emotion is increasing. According to this, the present study was conducted to test the model of the relationship between social anxiety and parental psychological control and social support with the mediation of cognitive distortions in students.
 
Method
The research method was descriptive-correlational and Structural equation modeling. The statistical population of the present study included all first and second high school male and female students who were studying in the academic year 2019-20. The statistical sample included 400 adolescents who were selected through a clustered random sampling method. After collecting the questionnaires and removing the distorted and incomplete questionnaires, 373 students remained in the research (198 female students and 175 male students). The applied questionnaires included Social Anxiety Scale (CAS) (LaGreca, 1998), Parental Psychological Control Questionnaire (PPCQ) (Soenens, Vansteenkiste, Luyten, 2010), Cognitive Distortions Questionnaire (CDQ) (Hamamci, Büyüköztürk, 2004), and Peer Social Support Questionnaire (PSSQ) (Procidano, Heller, 1983). The data analysis was conducted through way analysis. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS and Amos 23 software.
 
Results
The results showed that parental psychological control, peer social support, and cognitive distortions have a significant relationship with social anxiety (p<0.01). Moreover, parental psychological control and peer social support have a direct significant effect on cognitive distortions and social anxiety (p<0.01). Furthermore, the results of the Bootstrap and Sobel test showed that cognitive distortions have a significant mediation role in the relationship of parental psychological control and peer social support with social anxiety in male and female students (p<0.01). Finally, the model had an appropriate goodness of fit.
 
Conclusion
Taking the significant mediation role of cognitive distortions into account, clinical therapists must decrease the student's cognitive distortions by applying cognitive techniques. Reducing cognitive distortions allows adolescents to have more efficient cognitive processing. This process also reduces the incidence of cognitive errors.
 

Keywords

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