Feeling Lonely? Here Are Some Tips for College Students

The transition to college can be lonely, especially for those vulnerable to feeling anxious in interpersonal relationships. If you have ever felt alone when you are surrounded by people, you know loneliness is not only about how many friends you have, but also about not feeling connected to others as much as you would like. But one thing a person can forget is that how you interpret social interactions matters in how lonely you feel, and those interpretations can depend both on your way of relating to others and your way of viewing yourself.

Some individuals have a negative view of self but a positive view of others, which results in an anxious attachment style—meaning concern about the stability or security of the relationship. In their desperate attempts to avoid the psychological pain of loneliness, people with anxious attachment styles tend to get support by clinging to others or trying to control others to meet their needs, in part because they see themselves as helpless and have difficulty regulating their feelings of distress on their own.

But maybe this pattern can be altered. If people with more positive views of self tend to feel less lonely because they interpret social interactions more positively, then maybe that’s where change can start. Breaking a cycle of negative self-views and negative interpretations is especially important for first-year college students who are confronted with leaving home for the first time, making new friends, attempting challenging coursework, and trying to figure out who they are in this new environment.

How We View Ourselves And Others Matters In Loneliness

In our study, we asked first-year college students about their attachment styles (which could be anxious, for example, or avoidant), their overall feelings of self-esteem, their loneliness, and the different types of support they receive from others—where support could mean information, tangible items/services, emotional support, sense of belonging, validation, or opportunity to help others.

Indeed, both their self-view and their view of others affected feelings of loneliness in students with anxious attachment styles. Students who were more anxious in relating to others tended to have lower self-esteem and their maladaptive strategy of trying to engage others may have intensified their unsatisfied needs for support, which is in turn related to more loneliness. Emotional support and receiving tangible help and information from others were particularly important in reducing feelings of loneliness. It may be that students with more anxious ways of relating feel close to others when they receive emotional and practical support, but feel lonely if these specific needs are not met.

We think these findings could help diversify coping skills for first-year students adjusting to college. Targeting negative self-views by highlighting individuals’ strengths and helping the individual “reframe” negative beliefs about themselves—“I have the tools and skills to deal with negative emotions” instead of “I am helpless” —might be effective in changing the filter that these students have about themselves, which affects how they interpret social interactions. Building self-esteem can help students perceive social interactions in a more positive light. They can now say, “They are being nice to me because I am a good person” instead of “They are being nice to me to get something from me. If not, why would they be nice to someone like me?”

First-year students who are prone to anxious ways of relating to others may also benefit from feeling a strong emotional bond with at least one other person, such as family members or friends from high school. They can go to such a person for important decisions or advice if they are having problems or have an emergency. These types of support can help these students feel more intimate with others and protect against feelings of isolation.

Know Your Pattern And Learn More Effective Ways To Communicate And Deal With Negative Emotions And Thoughts

The results from this study are even more relevant in the current climate in which most college students have experienced disruptions in social support due to COVID-19-related restrictions. Considering the recent increases in anxiety and loneliness among college students, interventions targeting self-esteem by highlighting their strengths and more effective and healthy ways of engaging with others may help students learn how to ask directly for emotional support, advice, or tangible help—instead of indirectly trying to engage others by making catastrophic evaluations of the situation, dwelling on negative emotions, and/or being hypervigilant to cues of rejection.

Therapists at college counseling centers may consider helping first-year students who struggle with feelings of loneliness and who have these ineffective behavioral patterns by understanding where they come from (such as early behavioral patterns of engaging with parents) and by guiding them to develop more effective interpersonal skills. Strengthening self-esteem and the ability to better deal with negative emotions are learnable skills.


For Further Reading

So, C., & Fiori, K. L., (2022). Attachment anxiety and loneliness during the first year of college: self-esteem and social support as mediators. Personality and Individual Differences, 187, 111405. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111405
 

Christine So is a doctoral student in Clinical Psychology at Gordon. F. Derner School of Psychology, Adelphi University. Her research focuses on the social relationships of young and older adults.

A New Rock in College Students’ Shoes: Poor Program Design


Psychological distress is common in college. Students’ suffering is mainly seen in anxious and depressive symptoms, including restlessness, tense feelings, nervousness, sadness, lost interest, and hopelessness. Approximately one in three students will report this kind of emotional suffering, proportionally much more than in the general population (one in five approximately).

Psychological distress can harm students’ academic lives—producing lower grades, missing important obligations, and dropping out of college—and also more serious personal ones such as suicidal thoughts. We must understand why so many college students are struggling with psychological distress.

Psychological Distress and Psychological Needs

According to Self-Determination Theory, an important theory in motivation science, human beings seek to satisfy three fundamental psychological needs in order to achieve well-being and purpose. These needs are:

  • Competence—I am good at this activity,
  • Autonomy—I freely choose to engage in this activity, and
  • Relatedness—I feel important to significant others and significant others are important to me.

As the sun, water, and nutrients in the soil are fundamental for a plant to grow, competence, autonomy, and relatedness are crucial for optimal psychological growth in human beings. Thwarting these needs over a long period will cause harm.

Take a few seconds to consider your own experience while in school. You may have experienced frustration when studying for an exam in a class where explanations were unclear (competence thwarting) or in a subject you disliked (autonomy thwarting), or even where the teacher was unfriendly (relatedness thwarting). Now imagine that in various courses during your studies you felt incompetent, devoid of control over your decisions, and isolated. Would this still be a fulfilling experience, or would it be a distressing one? To ask the question is to answer it.

Psychological Needs and Teachers, Peers, and Study Program

Students can try to be proactive in fulfilling their needs, choosing programs where they feel they are likely to experience competence, autonomy, and relatedness. However, these programs exist in specific social contexts that students do not control. For example, a future student may select a major in engineering because they love this discipline, but they do not control how teachers will deliver their courses, how friendly their peers will be, or how their study program will be organized. Choosing and valuing something do not mean that one can expect to automatically satisfy their psychological needs. It is up to the teachers, peers, and programs to do what is necessary to support these needs to foster optimal functioning in students during college years.

What Our Research Says About College Students’ Psychological Distress

We surveyed 1,797 students and asked about their teachers, their peers, and their study program. Specifically, we distinguished the support versus thwarting of the needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness by these three sources. We found only a marginal importance of college teachers supporting autonomy, competence, and relatedness to reduce psychological distress.

In contrast, need thwarting by peers and study programs were the big harm doers. Disappointing peer relations are easy to understand as a source of distress, but disappointing study programs may be a surprising and overlooked factor spiraling students’ psychological distress during the college years. When students find that the study program has little predictability and coherence, no implemented means to criticize the curriculum, and high workload that leads them to neglect other areas of their life, they will experience more psychological distress. This finding is especially important considering that aspects inherent to study programs could be adjusted during program evaluation processes and curriculum design to better consider students’ needs.

In conclusion, each year college students may come with the expectation to develop their passion for a given field of study and to experience well-being and purpose, but certainly not to suffer from psychological distress. Our results might help college administrations to understand their responsibility in nurturing students’ autonomy, competence, and relatedness.


For Further Reading

Gilbert, W., Bureau, J. S., Poellhuber, B., & Guay, F. (2021). Predicting college students' psychological distress through basic psychological need-relevant practices by teachers, peers, and the academic program. Motivation and Emotion, 45,436–455. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-021-09892-4
 

Frédéric Guay and Julien Bureau are professors at Université Laval. Their research interests include determinants and consequences of students’ autonomous/controlled motivations.

William Gilbert is a PhD candidate at the same university. His research interests include mental health and healthy life habits among college students.

 

What Makes College Students Anxious?


In 1947, when W. H. Auden published The Age of Anxiety in the shadow of the First and Second World Wars, it made sense to argue that the world was an unstable and disturbing place. That was especially true for younger generations, who were forcibly drafted into those wars, and into other wars in the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast, one might expect today's youth to be less anxious. Yet scientific journals are filled with articles debating whether young people today are even more anxious and neurotic than their earlier counterparts.

Much of this scientific debate has revolved around statistics from annual surveys, but another route is to travel back in time and examine whether people worried less intensely and had fewer concerns. Although literal time travel is impossible, a researcher can interview people who’ve had long careers in counseling and have treated similar clients for most of that career. I took this route and interviewed several psychotherapists who had long tenures at college counseling centers to probe some questions about rising anxiety. You can find the full interview transcripts of my interviews online.

This method allowed me to probe into why college students, a relatively privileged group, might be more anxious than they formerly were. Counselors may not only have distinct recollection of changes in their work—more clients with more severe complaints—but also keep statistical records that show whether things have changed over time.

Was Anxiety Going Up Or Down?

On the question of rising anxiety, directors were almost unanimous—college students in the U.S. are more anxious than they were a generation ago. Some directors brought data to the table, documenting more demand. One recalled, “To the extent that we refer on a fairly regular basis to an intensive outpatient program that specializes in OCD, we're just seeing presentations at a rate and at an intensity that we never used to see before.” She had “close to zero” referrals when she started her 27-year career. A West Coast psychiatrist whose career stretched back 40 years mentioned that he and several colleagues had repeatedly witnessed students being more fragile or sensitive than those from previous generations.

When they asserted these facts, counselors also noted that there is less stigma around seeking help and that colleges are now more accessible, which means more economically stressed students and students with disabilities, who carry additional burdens. On top of that, my interviewees noted, more students enter college with a pre-existing diagnosis.

When I mentioned several potential causes, center directors agreed that competition had risen because a larger population was striving to get into roughly the same number of college and job slots. College rankings have also become a legitimate arbiter of worth. Some talented students are upset they’re attending a college that is ranked 20th. They had been aiming for the top five.

And Then There Are The Parents…

There was also some consensus about helicopter parenting. Even though one center director argued that parents were an effective battering ram against an unresponsive bureaucracy, many told me that technology has made it easier for parents to give advice and students to solicit advice, which means students make fewer independent decisions. Parents now attempt to initiate and monitor their children’s therapy sessions! Even though this interference violates privacy statutes, some tried to fake signatures on waivers to get around those restrictions.

On the other hand, center directors were more ambivalent about whether students were more focused on gaining external approval than they formerly were. A few directors stated that their clients had unrealistic ideals—some students believed that indecision about one’s life course signified failure.

Therapists were also ambivalent about the distinctiveness problem, which is the difficulty of achieving something unique, which sets one apart from the anonymous crowd. Some students have been insulated from failure experiences, giving them the unrealistic sense that they could easily achieve something distinctive.

But Wait, There’s More…

Of course, there was also the perennial challenge of coping with the small fish in a big pond: overachieving high-school students find they are merely average college students, having enrolled in a selective college where everyone used to be above average.

Lastly, center directors agreed that societal problems and threats can impinge upon students. This thesis, which comes from Jean Twenge’s contentious but influential research, is that terrorism, unemployment, wars, and the AIDS epidemic heightened mental distress in younger generations. The center directors whom I interviewed stated that police shootings and the election campaign of Donald Trump were particularly stressful because students tend to be progressive and sympathize with disadvantaged groups. They noted that economic recessions can be more painful today because students have greater debt—and higher aspirations.

Furthermore, in an earlier time, students who lived in dorms were also set apart from the world, but social media has erased that boundary—students can get exposed to disturbing news several times a day.

The most striking finding was that the boundaries between parents and students have now blurred to the point that college students, who are nominally young adults, are now in a phase of extended adolescence. Can we reverse this trend so that students once again use their college years to practice some fledgling autonomy before they become adults? If that goal isn’t attainable, colleges may at least take some steps to discourage helicopter parenting. Even so, overly concerned parents are just one factor; we may have to get used to a world where college students, like adults overall, are more frequently diagnosed with a mental illness.


For Further Reading

Martin, C. C. (2020). Why do college counselors perceive anxiety as increasing? A semi-structured examination of five causes. Journal of College Student Psychotherapyhttps://doi.org/10.1080/87568225.2020.1753611

Reed, K., Duncan, J. M., Lucier-Greer, M., Fixelle, C., & Ferraro, A. J. (2016). Helicopter parenting and emerging adult self-efficacy: Implications for mental and physical health. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 253136–3149. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10826-016-0466-x\

Sharkin. B. S. (2012). Being a college counselor on today’s campus. New York, NY: Taylor & Francis.

 

Chris C. Martin is Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology at Oglethorpe University. He immigrated to the U.S. after living in Saudi Arabia and India.

 

COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories: Who Believes These Bonkers Stories?

April of 2020 will go down as one of the most germophobic months in human history. As the extent of the COVID-19 pandemic became clear, nations around the world attempted to grapple with the looming public health and economic disasters ahead. Widespread lockdown measures tried to keep us safe in our homes (but, unfortunately, not safe from the horrific Tik-Tok dances some of us attempted…).

While this was all happening, we had many questions: “How long is this virus going to last?,” “How did this all happen?” and, of course, “Who was responsible for this mess?”

The Comfort of a Conspiracy Theory

As I mentioned in my previous conspiracy-crammed blog on Character and Context (May 8, 2020), a conspiracy theory is a set of beliefs, often false, suggesting that an event is a result of a plot devised by multiple actors to carry out their own self-interests.

Going down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories can be a real treat! It can be fun, enthralling, and to some, comforting—especially when they’re stressed. Conspiracy theories can be an easy way to explain really complex things we experience—including a pandemic.

So, is this a problem? By most accounts no; this is how people deal with life, which is perfectly fine. But can a person’s conspiracy beliefs affect other people? Unfortunately, yes.

By the very nature of a pandemic, we’re all in this together, which means we all need to be on a similar wavelength in our beliefs about how serious COVID-19 is and what we should be doing about it. Considering this, you can imagine how problems can arise if someone thinks the whole thing is a hoax based on a social media post. And it’s probably a little worse if that one person becomes thousands who refuse to follow public health guidelines.

Our Research

While I was rocking the 24-hour pajama fashion in my home during lockdown, I wondered about the factors that might predispose people to believe these COVID-19 conspiracy theories? Are they the same people who believe all sorts of conspiracies, like the moon landing was a fake? Or are these just regular people who are hurting, and just want to know why this has all happened … maybe both?

We obtained a sample of more than 600 people from over 40 countries, who completed a series of questionnaires and psychological assessments, including an assessment of the most popularly searched conspiracy theories according to the website Statistica.  Our findings can be summed up in three general patterns.

First, some people just never change. Those who had very strong beliefs in conspiracy theories about past events—such as the Moon landings, the Kennedy Assassination, and Jeffrey Epstein’s death, were quicker to jump on conspiracy theories about COVID-19 than people who didn’t tend to harbor other conspiracy beliefs. Considering how conspiracy theories are often large, interweaved stories about different aspects of life threaded together to make grander conspiracies, it makes sense that a grand event like COVID-19 would be a nice addition to that web. For example, “those people” responsible for faking the moon landing may also be involved in creating the virus.

Second, when we examined who was most likely to grip onto these COVID-19 conspiracy theories, people with the lowest levels of education and people who held very negative opinions of their government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic were more likely to believe in COVID-19 conspiracies.

This pattern of results suggests that people who may not be the best at comprehending complex events (reflected in lower educational attainment) were more likely to disagree with their government’s decisions and to believe that their government wasn’t acting in the community’s best interests. It also seemed that people who are very angry that the situation happened needed a scapegoat to blame. That scapegoat was often handpicked through these conspiracies—whether it was the World Health Organization, the Chinese, government officials, or Bill Gates.

Other research shows that people are more likely to believe conspiracy theories when they are under stress.  Did that happen here? Although stress management skills are important and always make unpredictable events a little bit easier, people who are struggling to handle their stress are not more likely to join the tin foil hat society. Even the people who were most stressed out by the pandemic held strong to their faith in the conventional.  Stress level was not associated with believing in conspiracy theories.

Summing Up

This pandemic has highlighted the conspiracists who dwell within our communities. If your outlook on the world was already suspicious and cynical, chances are you were going to be skeptical about this pandemic and tend to believe that something fishy is going on.

Whether or not you believe in the COVID-19 pandemic, keep in mind that being tested, practicing social distancing, wearing masks, and staying away from others if unwell ensures that you never have to test these beliefs the hard way.


For Further Reading

Georgiou, M., Delfabbro, P. H., & Balzan, R. (2019). Conspiracy beliefs in the general Population: The importance of psychopathology, cognitive style and educational attainment, Personality and Individual Differences, 151.

Find it here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886919304532

Georgiou, M., Delfabbro, P. H., & Balzan, R (2020) COVID-19-related conspiracy beliefs and their relationship with perceived stress and pre-existing conspiracy beliefs, Personality and Individual Differences, 166:110201, DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2020.110201

Find it here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886920303901
 

Neophytos Georgiou is a PhD and Master of Clinical Psychology Candidate from the University of Adelaide, Australia.

Insecure Relationships Change Our View of the World

Have you ever felt insecure and anxious in a relationship? You yearned for someone’s approval and intimacy, yet their affection remained out of reach. You felt anxious about whether your friend, partner, or even parent truly cared for you. Clinging onto the few good moments when you felt accepted and loved, you hoped that something would change.

Sound familiar? Maybe I’m just projecting, but I think almost all of us have experienced a relationship like this. Although such relationships aren’t easy, there is some good news. It probably wasn’t your fault. I’ve always disliked the stereotype of clingy people who worry too much about whether other people care about them. In my experience, whether I feel insecure, neglected, or needy in a relationship depends entirely on the other person and how well I fit with them, how much I trust them, and how responsive they are. The good news then: If you feel insecure in a relationship, you’re not being clingy per se—you just need to find someone you feel more comfortable around.

Okay, now the bad news. Researchers, including one of the first female psychologists, Mary Ainsworth, discovered that having inconsistent, neglectful relationships can lead people to adopt an anxious approach to future relationships. Ainsworth and others, including John Bowlby, noted that children whose mothers were inconsistent in how they cared for their children—loved at one moment, dropped on your head in the next—had a harder time adjusting to social relationships. Specifically, these children sought close relationships but also expected their relationships to be unreliable in the future. A real catch-22.

Two quick caveats: First, inconsistent relationships can lead to relationship problems, but they don’t always do. There’s not a one-to-one link between inconsistent parenting and future social insecurity. Your parents may have treated you poorly, but you are A-Okay, happily married, and have five kids. On average though, past experiences of inconsistent care and chaotic affection will leave their mark. Second, these outcomes are not restricted to just parenting. Like inconsistent parents, a recent romantic relationship or friendship in which you received inconsistent affection is also likely to make you feel more anxious in future relationships.  

Here’s where things get really interesting. Inconsistent affection from close others (including romantic relationships, friendships, and familial relationships) may impact more than your approach to future relationships. It may also influence deeper, more basic psychological processes. Not only did your tumultuous affair with Ben or Becky last year lead you to approach future relationships with an abundance of caution, but it may also have changed how you judge not only social relationships but also the world in general.

In a series of studies with over 1,000 participants, Margaret Clark and I found that feeling anxious in social relationships—desiring affection but expecting relationships to be unreliable—leads people to dislike inconsistency even in non-social situations. As it turns out, inconsistent care may lead people to dislike anything in their environment that is irregular, unusual, or breaks the consistency and routines they are used to.

We documented this effect in a number of ways. For example, we found that people who approach social relationships in an anxious manner (presumably due to inconsistent affection in a previous relationship) dislike broken patterns of geometric shapes, such as a row of triangles with one triangle out of line, more than people who are secure in their relationships. Similarly, asking people to reflect on a time they experienced inconsistent care also made them dislike broken geometric patterns right afterwards. And, these findings occurred even when we took other relevant psychological variables, such as how much people disliked novelty and relationships in general, into account.

But why does experiencing inconsistent affection—whether from romantic partners, friends, or family members—lead people to dislike and shy away from irregularities in their environments, including even non-social inconsistencies? Bowlby and Ainsworth suggested that caring relationships allow us to go out and confidently explore the world. The world, as you know, is filled with inconsistent, irregular, and unexpected things—things that are likely to freak you out if you don’t have a secure social base you can return to (in my case, on the couch with my partner and her cat). For this reason, actions and objects that are irregular or inconsistent are perceived as more negative after experiencing a tumultuous relationship.

In fact, adopting a general dislike of broken patterns in response to inconsistent care and affection may be functional. Disliking people who break physical patterns (such as people who are ill) or social patterns (such has those who break social norms) may help vulnerable people avoid those who are unreliable or inconsistent. Similarly, disliking broken patterns may help people avoid inconsistent events and irregular objects, which increases their feelings of control and safety. Indeed, research shows that people will create illusory patterns in their minds—patterns that don’t actually exist—to regain feelings of control and security.

In the end, experiencing an anxious connection with a close other may have a larger impact on people’s emotions and behaviors than originally thought. Not only may experiencing inconsistent care lead you to approach relationships in a more anxious manner, it may also change your view of the world more generally. But, now that you’re aware of this, you may be able to control it. The next time you are struggling with a tumultuous relationship, you might want to embrace rather than shy away from the irregularities around you. Celebrate things that are weird and unusual. Choose to be open to new experiences, and recognize that, ultimately, there are many caring and warm-hearted companions out there.    


For Further Reading

Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1979). Infant–mother attachment. American Psychologist, 34, 932–937.

Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss: Volume 2. Separation: Anxiety and anger. New York: Basic Books.

Gollwitzer, A., & Clark, S. M. (2018). Anxious attachment as an antecedent of people’s aversion towards pattern deviancy. European Journal of Social Psychology, 49, 1206–1222.

Gollwitzer, A., Marshall, J., Wang, Y., & Bargh, J. A. (2017). Relating pattern deviancy aversion to stigma and prejudice. Nature Human Behaviour, 1, 920–927. 

 

Anton Gollwitzer is completing his Ph. D. in psychology at Yale University. His interests are perversely diverse and span across social psychology, clinical psychology, and human behavior more generally. See www.antongollwitzer.com for a peek at the projects he’s currently working on.

When You Don't Feel Valued in a Relationship, Sleep Suffers

We spend up to one-third of our life asleep, but not everyone sleeps well. For couples, it turns out how well you think your partner understands and cares for you is linked to how well you sleep.  The results are published in Social Personality and Psychological Science.

“Our findings show that individuals with responsive partners experience lower anxiety and arousal, which in turn improves their sleep quality,” says lead author Dr. Emre Selçuk, a developmental and social psychologist at Middle East Technical University in Turkey.

One of the most important functions of sleep is to protect us against deteriorations in physical health. However, this protective function of sleep can only be realized when we have high quality uninterrupted sleep, known as restorative sleep.

Restorative sleep requires feelings of safety, security, protection and absence of threats. For humans, the strongest source of feelings of safety and security is responsive social partners—whether parents in childhood or romantic partners in adulthood.

“Having responsive partners who would be available to protect and comfort us should things go wrong is the most effective way for us humans to reduce anxiety, tension, and arousal,” says Selçuk.

The research supports findings from the past several years by an international collaboration of researchers including Emre Selçuk (Middle East Technical University, Turkey), Anthony Ong (Cornell University, US), Richard Slatcher and Sarah Stanton (Wayne State University, US), Gul Gunaydin (Bilkent University, Turkey), and David Almeida (Penn State, US).

Using data from the Midlife Development in the United States project, past projects from the researchers showed connections between partner responsiveness, physical health and psychological well-being over several years.

“Taken together, the corpus of evidence we obtained in recent years suggests that our best bet for a happier, healthier, and a longer life is having a responsive partner,” says Selçuk.


Selçuk, Emre; Stanton, Sarah; Slachter, Richard; Ong, Anthony, "Perceived Partner Responsiveness Predicts Better Sleep Quality through Lower Anxiety" Social Psychological and Personality Science Online first August 17, 2016. DOI: 10.1177/1948550616662128.

Social Psychological and Personality Science (SPPS) is an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), the Association for Research in Personality (ARP), the European Association of Social Psychology (EASP), and the Society for Experimental Social Psychology (SESP). Social Psychological and Personality Science publishes innovative and rigorous short reports of empirical research on the latest advances in personality and social psychology.

Do Gender Accepting Parents Have Less Anxious Children?

Social anxiety can be difficult to grapple with, especially during childhood. This is particularly true for children who don't conform to stereotypical gender norms and therefore may not be accepted by their peers. For example, a boy might like activities and clothing that are more like what the girls in his classroom like than the other boys. When children learn what boys and girls are supposed to say, do, and look like, gender-nonconforming youth tend to feel more anxious due to social rejection compared to children who do not defy gender norms.

We wondered whether parents' acceptance of gender atypicality could mitigate social anxiety among gender-expansive children. "Gender expansive" is a broad label that applies to any child who does not conform to gender stereotypic norms and can include children who are transgender although our study did not.

To explore this, we conducted a two-year longitudinal study of the links between children's gender atypicality, social anxiety, and parental acceptance. The study, which included 209 kindergarteners, 206 second graders, and 206 fourth graders, examined the connection between children's gender atypicality and their teachers' reports of children's social anxiety over the course of a year. We measured gender atypicality by asking children how similar they are to girls and to boys overall and on specific dimensions such as appearance, mannerisms, interests, and behavioral preferences. From these ratings we created measures of whether the children felt more or less like same-gender and other-gender peers.

Are Gender-Expansive Children More Socially Anxious?

Surprisingly, the answer is no. Contrary to our expectations, children's gender atypicality was not directly associated with their social anxiety one year later. This was true whether gender atypicality was due to children feeling more dissimilar to their own gender or similar to the other gender. Being gender expansive (not feeling like one's own-gender peers or feeling a lot like other-gender peers) did not necessarily lead to social anxiety.

Does Parents' Gender Diversity Acceptance Buffer Against Social Anxiety?

What role do parents play? We examined whether the link between children's gender typicality and social anxiety depends on parental acceptance and children's grade levels. Parents reported their acceptance of gender typicality by rating eight items about how acceptable it would be if they had a daughter/son who had a stereotypically feminine/ masculine personality; liked stereotypically feminine/masculine activities and interests; had stereotypically feminine/masculine mannerisms (like ways of talking or walking); and liked to dress in a stereotypically feminine/masculine way.

Overall, parent acceptance mattered more for younger children than older children. For kindergartners, parents' acceptance of gender atypicality protected children from social anxiety, regardless of their gender typicality. For second graders, parental rejection of gender atypicality, not acceptance, drove children's social anxiety scores. For 4th graders, parental acceptance did not protect gender atypicality from social anxiety.

It's possible that older gender-expansive students need social support beyond the family, including peers and mentors in the greater community, to buffer them from social rejection.

Implications for Mental Health of Gender-Expansive Children

Parental acceptance of gender nonconformity (and lack thereof) affects the mental health of even young children. Parents who embrace and support their children's interests and attitudes, regardless of gender norms, create a nurturing environment that fosters emotional resilience.

Parental acceptance involves acknowledging and encouraging children's unique preferences, whether playing with a wide range of toys, expressing themselves through clothing choices, or exploring activities that do not conform to traditional expectations.

Parents can foster acceptance by talking to children in ways that validate their feelings and experiences and reinforce the idea that it's okay to be different. Offering a safe space for open communication allows children to express themselves freely, knowing they have the support of their parents.

Parents can also challenge societal stereotypes by introducing their children to diverse perspectives and celebrating individuality.

Parental acceptance is reflected in everyday moments that shape a child's sense of self-worth and security. By fostering an environment where uniqueness is embraced, parents play a pivotal role in promoting the mental health and resilience of gender-expansive children.


For Further Reading

Xiao, S.X., Hoffer, A.L., Benoit, R.L., Scrofani, S., & Martin, C. L. (2023).  Parents matter: Accepting parents have less anxious gender expansive children. Sex Roles, 89, 459–474. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-023-01387-5

Xiao, S. X., Cook, R. E., Martin, C. L., & Nielson, G. M. (2019). Characteristics of preschool gender enforcers and peers who associate with them. Sex Roles, 81, 671-685. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-019-01026-y

Martin, C. L., Andrews, N. C., England, D. E., Zosuls, K., & Ruble, D. N. (2017a). A dual identity approach for conceptualizing and measuring children's gender identity. Child Development, 88, 167–182. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12568


Aubrey Hoffer is a graduate student at Arizona State University who studies body image with the aim of understanding how to promote a positive body image for people of all genders.

Sonya Xinyue Xiao is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Northern Arizona University. Her research focuses on children's positive social development, especially as related to gender and race/ethnicity.

Stephan Scrofani has a PhD from Arizona State University in Human Development and Family Studies. His work focuses on promoting positive socio-emotional development for transgender youth. This includes identifying school climate supports in school spaces, and exploring the protective role of parent-child communication and support at home.

Carol Lynn Martin is a Cowden Distinguished Professor of Child Development in the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. Her research and intervention work centers on gender development, peer relationships, and student academic success.

Can Conspiracy Beliefs Be Beneficial?

Conspiracy theories flourish in times of crisis. From the great fire of Rome in A.D. 64 to the plague outbreaks in 1349, and the recent Coronavirus pandemic—history is full of examples where people explained significant social or political events through alleged conspiracies, and scapegoated certain social groups or individuals in this process.

A conspiracy is a secret plot by powerful people, the alleged conspirators. These conspirators pursue their interests regardless of the consequences for others or society as a whole, which is why conspiracies tend to have harmful consequences for the general public. A conspiracy belief is the conviction that a conspiracy has taken (or is currently taking) place. Well-known examples are the belief that Bill Gates is using the Coronavirus vaccines to gain control over the world population, or that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job by the U.S. government.

And yes, you might wonder—actual conspiracies do happen in the world. Consider for example the Volkswagen emissions scandal: a secret plan by a powerful group that had harmful consequences for society. Or, arguably, the systematic covering up of sexual misconduct in the Catholic church. These 'real' conspiracies differ from more implausible conspiracy theories in that they involve different actors with different aims and goals, and are restricted to a limited amount of people, events, and institutions. In contrast to implausible conspiracy theories, 'real' conspiracies are less overarching, and more limited by time and geography. They also tend to become uncovered by official means of investigation.

Why Do People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?

Obviously, some people do, even when the theories appear implausible and there is no convincing evidence to support them. This question has kept researchers busy for many years. Social psychological research so far suggests that fundamental needs for security and certainty play an important role in the adoption of conspiracy beliefs. While official explanations for events like the pandemic are often complex and incomplete, conspiracy theories offer seemingly simple answers that leave no questions open. On top of that, conspiracy beliefs allow a person to brush off any counter-evidence very easily: If anyone says something against the theory, well, then that person must be in on it, too!

These characteristics of conspiracy beliefs have sparked the idea that they may be especially appealing to people who do not deal well with uncertainty, a proposition that has been supported by research. Conspiracy beliefs have an additional feature that makes them attractive, particularly to individuals who strive to feel safe and in control: Since conspiracy theories posit that the world is controlled by a small group of powerful people, they imply that the world is, in fact, controllable. Such a worldview may be more comforting than believing in a world where nobody is in control, and bad things happen just by accident.

But Do Conspiracy Beliefs Actually 'Work'?

Can they be beneficial in the sense that they make people feel safer, less anxious, and less distressed by uncertainty? This is the question that my coworkers and I set out to answer at the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic. We conducted two studies that asked the same people several times, over a span of time, about the extent to which they (a) experienced a range of anxiety symptoms, (b) felt distressed by uncertainty ("uncertainty aversion"), (c) felt insecure and in danger ("existential threat"), and (d) believed in conspiracies (for example, by asking their agreement with statements like "I believe that events that at first glance seem unrelated are often the result of secret activities").

Would changes in conspiracy beliefs be followed by changes in anxiety, uncertainty aversion, and existential threat at a later time point? If conspiracy beliefs were actually beneficial for people, then one would expect increases in conspiracy beliefs to be followed by decreases in these undesirable feelings.  

But this is not what happened. Instead, when we interviewed participants four times every two weeks, we found the opposite result: Increases in conspiracy beliefs were followed by subsequent increases in anxiety, uncertainty aversion, and existential threat. That is, being more convinced of a conspiracy actually made people feel worse. In a way, this is not surprising: Conspiracy theories consist of a worldview that is filled with suspicion and mistrust, and provide many additional triggers to feel anxious and uncertain about.

However, we did not find this harmful effect of conspiracy beliefs in a second study, which had more people and longer time gaps (four months) between measurements. Together, the two studies suggest that conspiracy beliefs are most likely not beneficial with regard to the experience of anxiety, uncertainty, and threat. Whether they are actually harmful to the well-being of individuals needs to be confirmed by future research.

What Do People Get Out of Conspiracy Beliefs?

Many possibilities come to mind. Embracing conspiracy theories may simply be an entertaining way to overcome boredom. Or it may offer people a sense of connection and a community of like-minded others. Nevertheless, despite these potential benefits, it is important to keep in mind that people who believe in conspiracies may also suffer from their beliefs. Most likely, they are worried about the consequences of the alleged conspiracy for themselves and their loved ones. They should be approached with empathy and sensitivity.


For Further Reading

Douglas, K. M., Sutton, R. M., & Cichocka, A. (2017). The psychology of conspiracy theories. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(6), 538–542. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417718261

Douglas, K. M., & Sutton, R. M. (2023). What are conspiracy theories? A definitional approach to their correlates, consequences, and communication. Annual Review of Psychology, 74, 271–298. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-032420-031329

Liekefett, L., Christ, O., & Becker, J. C. (2023). Can conspiracy beliefs be beneficial? Longitudinal linkages between conspiracy beliefs, anxiety, uncertainty aversion, and existential threat. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 49(2), 167–179. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211060965


Luisa Liekefett is a doctoral candidate at the University of Osnabrück in Germany. She studies psychological responses to societal crises, such as conspiracy beliefs, collective action, and protests.

Your Hands Show Your Anxiety

Have you noticed and speculated why some people are more likely to rub their hands, touch their hair, or manipulate their adornments while speaking?

Self-touch—also called "self-adaptors" and "body-focused movements"—refers to rubbing, scratching, or grooming one's body or adornments without an obvious connection to the meaning of the speech or the ongoing task. Traditionally, self-touch was thought to relieve sensory stimulation such as itchy skin, or readjusting adornments to satisfy personal needs. However, researchers have long known it relates to negative affect, particularly anxiety.

For example, a study showed that people self-touched more after listening to and discussing texts about leeches than canaries, with the assumption that leeches would induce a higher level of anxiety than canaries. In addition, people self-touch more when doing a stressful test. But studies are very incomplete. For example, they did not measure people's actual anxiety levels or included only one gender in the study. Furthermore, we needed research on the phenomenon in more naturalistic conversations.

Therefore, we videotaped people's hand movements during face-to-face conversations about daily topics and then measured their momentary anxiety level induced by the conversations (such as "I feel frightened") and their general and stable trait anxiety level (for example "I worry too much over something that really doesn't matter").

In addition to anxiety, we also examined neuroticism and agreeableness to see if they are connected to self-touch during conversations. Neuroticism is a personality trait that predisposes individuals to experience negative affect such as anxiety, depression, worry, and fear. Given that neuroticism is closely associated with anxiety and the observation that people high in neuroticism appear to have difficulty in monitoring emotion and interpret ordinary situations as threatening, it is not surprising that self-touch has been observed to associate with neuroticism. We asked, what matters more in predicting self-touching—anxiety in particular or the more general trait of neuroticism?

Agreeableness is a personality trait associated with sympathy, warmth, consideration, and cooperation during social interaction. As self-touch has been found to relate to negative impressions, people with lower agreeableness may perform more self-touch during conversations as they are less likely to care about interpersonal relationships or maintain harmony with others. Yet, previous studies only examined the relationship between self-touch and agreeableness in people with skin diseases that are accompanied by intense itchiness. Hence, we examined whether the same phenomenon happens more generally.

Accordingly, we recruited 127 ordinary English speakers to have a conversation under fairly standardized conditions. They watched two 1-2 minute cartoon clips and described them to the experimenter, and they were presented with social dilemma stories and described their solutions—for example, what to say to a character who found it hard to allocate her time to her old friends and her new friend who did not get along with her old friends. After completing the tasks, the participants reported on their anxiety and personality.

The Key Finding: Anxiety in the Moment

In fact, momentary anxiety rather than general anxiety, neuroticism, or agreeableness was the main contributor to self-touch during these face-to-face conversations. This finding strongly suggests that in daily life, people who experience a higher level of momentary anxiety also perform more self-touch.

Nonetheless, it is important to note that the findings only demonstrate an association between momentary anxiety and self-touch during conversations. We don't know that anxiety actually causes the touching. And, the "why" of this association is still a question. Does self-touching reduce anxiety?


For Further Reading

Pang, H. T., Canarslan, F., & Chu, M. (2022). Individual differences in conversational self-touch frequency correlate with state anxiety. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 46, 299–319. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-022-00402-9

Heaven, L., McBrayer, D., & Prince, B. (2002). Role of sex in externally motivated self-touching gestures. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 95(1), 289–294. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.2002.95.1.289

Mohiyeddini, C., Bauer, S., & Semple, S. (2015). Neuroticism and stress: The role of displacement behaviour. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 28(4), 391–407. https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2014.1000878

Schut, C., Muhl, S., Reinisch, K., Claßen, A., Jäger, R., Gieler, U., & Kupfer, J. (2015). Agreeableness and self-consciousness as predictors of induced scratching and itch in patients with psoriasis. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 22(6), 726–734. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-015-9471-5


Mingyuan Chu is a Lecturer at the School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen. He is interested in understanding the role of nonverbal behaviors in communication and problem-solving.

Hio Tong Pang is a graduate of the University of Aberdeen and studying an MSc at the University of Edinburgh. She is interested in the fields of interpersonal interaction and emotional regulation.

Our Anxious Online Selves

In his famous and often quoted graduation speech, "This is Water," given at Kenyon College in 2005, David Foster Wallace remarked:

"There are two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"

The ubiquitous "water" in which so many of us find ourselves swimming in 2022 is our virtual environment, where countless interactions with other human beings play out on social media platforms.

This raises numerous questions: how does this increasingly rich and dynamic social context affect our cognition and behavior? Since so much of the content we're exposed to on social media is determined by computer algorithms that quietly chug away behind the scenes, how much autonomy do we really have, as hapless users, to shape our online contexts? And which psychological factors affect the content people share?

These questions motivated my colleague and me to conduct a study on people's Instagram use. Instagram is one of the world's most popular social media apps, with a user base of well over 1 billion. The app has come under intense scrutiny lately because of the harms it can pose to young people and their mental health, so it is both timely and critical to ask exactly how, when, and why social media can pose threats to a person's health and well-being.

We studied the links between people's levels of social anxiety, how their self-esteem was tied to and affected by their Instagram use, and ways in which they controlled and curated the content they shared on their accounts (for example, by disabling comments on posts).

To do this, we asked 250 people of all ages from around the world to describe when and how they feel social anxiety. For example, a person might say they experience greater unease and stress when "Attending a social event where I only know one person," and "Being asked out by a person I am attracted to." We also asked about how their Instagram use affects their self-worth, which was indicated by greater agreement with statements like "When I get a lot of likes and new followers on my Instagram, my self-esteem increases," and "I feel worthwhile when others like or comment on my Instagram posts." Finally, we looked at how much the people disabled comments for individual posts, spent time editing and annotating photos and videos, and spent time editing captions after a post has already been shared.

More Social Anxiety is Linked to One's Instagram-related Self-Worth 

We found that more socially anxious people were more likely to have their self-worth tied to their experiences on Instagram. Those with greater social anxiety—arising in part from the stress of being negatively evaluated by other Instagram users—were more likely to have "higher highs" and "lower lows," with respect to their self-esteem, as they interacted on the platform.

Furthermore, those who experienced this specific, Instagram-related self-worth were especially likely to carefully curate whatever content they decided to share on their accounts. This means that social anxiety can have a real effect on people's sense of self-worth in virtual contexts, and this in turn can impact how a person uses social media.

This paves the way for a lot of interesting future research. For example, researchers can examine whether spending a lot of time on the content of one's Instagram account is adaptive and helps protect against threats to self-esteem and mental health, or contributes to a cyclical, maladaptive pattern that backfires and maintains—or increases—one's level of social anxiety and Instagram-related self-worth. Of course, we collected data at only one point in time, so we cannot say what is causing what. It could be that more socially anxious people approach and use social media differently than their less socially anxious counterparts to begin with, or it could be that content control behaviors can impact a person's social anxiety and self-worth. Both could be true.

This study only scratches the surface on questions that could be very important for a great many people. Just knowing that a person's feelings of self-worth can be tied to Instagram should be a wake-up call, if nothing else. 


For Further Reading

Crocker, J., Brook, A. T., Niiya, Y., & Villacorta, M. (2006). The pursuit of self-esteem: Contingencies of self-worth and self-regulation. Journal of Personality, 74(6), 1749-1772. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2006.00427.x

Lopez, R. B., & Polletta, I. (2021). Regulating self-image on Instagram: Links between social anxiety, Instagram contingent self-worth, and content control behaviors. Frontiers in Psychology, 3700. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.711447

Orlowski, J. (Director). (2020). The Social Dilemma [Film]. Exposure Labs. netflix.com/title/81254224.


Richard Lopez is an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he directs the Social Neuroscience of Affective Processes Lab. He and his research team examine psychological processes that underlie self-regulation and goal pursuit across domains, with the goal of developing personalized interventions to improve health and wellbeing.