Evaluating The Effect Of Fear On Social Anxiety In Middle School Students: The Mediating Role Of Self-efficacy In Emotion Regulation

Social interaction activities are crucial to the development of adolescents.Social anxiety,as a negative emotional experience in social activities,refers to individuals' strong emotional reactions in social situations,such as tension and fear,which are manifested in adolescents.It is particularly prominent and attracts the attention of researchers.The study found that fear of evaluation is an important factor in social anxiety.Both the positive and negative dimensions of fear of evaluation have obvious positive predictive effects on social anxiety.As a cognitive symptom of an individual,fear of evaluation is not only related to the individual's psychological adaptation,but also affects many aspects of the individual's mental health.Among the two dimensions it contains,fear of negative evaluation refers to the fact that an individual actively treats fear of possible negative evaluations in a social situation;fear of positive evaluation is mainly manifested in that when socially anxious people are publicly evaluated by those in contact with them in a positive manner,it will cause them to worry,fear and other emotions.When the individual's fear of evaluation increases,the level of social anxiety will also increase.In addition,the researchers found that regulatory emotional self-efficacy,as an individual's degree of self-confidence in their own ability to regulate emotions,is negatively correlated with social anxiety.Individuals' regulatory emotional self-efficacy decreases and social anxiety increases.At the same time,fear of evaluation is negatively correlated with regulatory emotional self-efficacy.When individual fear of evaluation is high,regulatory emotional self-efficacy decreases.However,the cognitive behavioral model of social anxiety believes that evaluating the predictive effect of fear on social anxiety needs to be done through other variables.In summary,it can be inferred that fear of evaluation may further affect social anxiety by affecting regulatory emotional self-efficacy.This study explored the mechanism of action among the three.This research uses "The Scale of Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy(SRESE)","Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale(BFNES)","Fear of Positive Evaluationr Scale(FPES)" and "LSAS Social Anxiety Scale" as research tools.Taking 850 middle school students from six middle schools in Jiangsu Province,Gansu Province and Guangdong Province as the research objects,this study explores the relationship among fear of evaluation(fear of negative evaluation,fear of positive evaluation),regulatory emotional self-efficacy,and social anxiety,and compares emotions.regulatory emotional self-efficacy as an intermediary variable explores the mechanism of action among the above variables.The main results are as follows:(1)In terms of gender,girls' fear of negative evaluation and social anxiety scores were significantly higher than boys';boys' regulatory emotional self-efficacy was significantly higher than girls'.In the dimension of emotional regulation self-efficacy that regulates negative emotional efficacy,the level of boys is significantly higher than that of girls.In grades,the fear of negative evaluation of junior high school students is significantly higher than that of high school students,and the social anxiety of high school students is significantly higher than that of junior high school students.(2)Middle school students' fear of negative evaluation is significantly positively correlated with fear of positive evaluation and social anxiety,and significantly negatively correlated with regulatory emotional self-efficacy;fear of positive evaluation is significantly positively correlated with social anxiety;fear of positive evaluation is not significantly correlated with regulatory emotional self-efficacy Relationship: regulatory emotional selfefficacy is significantly negatively correlated with social anxiety.In the two dimensions of emotional self-efficacy,expressing positive emotional efficacy and regulating negative emotional efficacy are negatively correlated with social anxiety.(3)Middle school students' fear of negative evaluation and regulatory emotional selfefficacy have significant predictive effects on social anxiety,and regulatory emotional selfefficacy plays a part of mediating role between fear of negative evaluation and social anxiety.By analyzing the relationship between the above variables,the following conclusions are drawn: when the individual's fear of negative evaluation and fear of positive evaluation scores are higher,the level of social anxiety is higher.At the same time,the higher the individual's fear of negative evaluation score,the lower the regulatory emotional selfefficacy;the lower the individual's regulatory emotional self-efficacy,the higher the social anxiety.Through the analysis of the mediation effect,it can be seen that the individual's fear of negative evaluation will lead to a decrease in their regulatory emotional self-efficacy,which in turn increases their level of social anxiety.