The Relationship between Perfectionism of Children and Social Anxiety: The Mediating Effect of Automatic Thoughts
AUTHOR : 이아연, 김리진
INFORMATION : page. 201~220 / 2022 Vol.29 No.1
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between children’s perfectionism and social anxiety mediated by automatic thoughts. 244 elementary school students in J city of Jeonbuk Province participated in the study. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 23.0 and PROCESS Macro 4.0. The major findings of this study are as follows. First, according to gender, there were differences in the sub-factors of social anxiety and automatic thoughts. Also, according to grade, there were differences in social anxiety and automatic thoughts. Second, only self-oriented perfectionism and the sub-factor of perfectionism showed a positive correlation with social anxiety. Also, automatic thoughts showed a positive correlation with perfectionism and social anxiety. Third, automatic thoughts showed a full mediating effect in the relationship between children’s perfectionism and social anxiety. This means that cognitive intervention can help alleviate the psychological discomfort of perfectionist children experienced in social situations. This study confirms the cognitive process in which children’s social anxiety is reinforced from perfectionism through automatic thoughts. The study has therapeutic implications. A cognitive program that changes irrational thoughts into rational thinking can be effective in alleviating social anxiety in children.