Social Anxiety-Impulsivity Subgroups and Links to Later Emotional Adjustment in Adolescence: A Latent Transition Analysis

Nejra Van Zalk,Ewa Mörtberg,Maria Tillfors

doi:10.1177/0272431620919153

Nejra Van Zalk, Ewa Mörtberg + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431620919153

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Abstract

A growing body of research has acknowledged the heterogeneity of subclinical social anxiety, identifying a subgroup of individuals who exhibit high levels of impulsivity. In a sample of Swedish early adolescents ( N = 2,509, Mage = 13.64; 52.8% girls), we conducted latent transition analyses (LTA) to identify four classes of subclinical social anxiety-impulsivity across three time points. We identified a Low Social Anxiety-Low Impulsivity class, as well as a High Anxiety-High Impulsivity class for girls and boys, which had high levels of Time-4 internalizing problems. The latter class was less stable but larger for boys. There was also a more typical High Anxiety-Low Impulsivity class for both genders. Nevertheless, Low Anxiety-High Impulsivity girls and boys fared the worst in terms of both internalizing and externalizing problems later on. To our knowledge, this is the first study to adopt an LTA framework to investigate trajectories of early adolescent social anxiety-impulsivity over time.

Highlights

Subclinical social anxiety can be a problem for young people in their everyday lives, as it is related to social fears, worry and rumination about events, negative feelings, discomfort, and somatic symptoms such as trembling, blushing, and sweating before, during, and after social interactions (Heiser, Turner, Beidel, & Roberson-Nay, 2009)
There might be important subgroup fluctuations that are not captured at one point in time, but to our knowledge only two studies have examined the links between social anxiety and impulsivity using longitudinal samples of subclinical adolescents (Tillfors, Van Zalk, & Kerr, 2013) and early adults (Kashdan et al, 2008)
A growing literature has identified a small and uncharacteristic subgroup of highly socially anxious individuals who are impulsive among clinical adults (Kashdan & McKnight, 2010; Kashdan et al, 2009; Mörtberg et al, 2014), and subclinical early adolescents (Tillfors, Mörtberg, et al, 2013; Tillfors, Van Zalk, & Kerr, 2013) as well as adults (Kashdan et al, 2008; Nicholls et al, 2014)

Summary

Introduction

Subclinical social anxiety can be a problem for young people in their everyday lives, as it is related to social fears, worry and rumination about events, negative feelings, discomfort, and somatic symptoms such as trembling, blushing, and sweating before, during, and after social interactions (Heiser, Turner, Beidel, & Roberson-Nay, 2009). There might be important subgroup fluctuations that are not captured at one point in time, but to our knowledge only two studies have examined the links between social anxiety and impulsivity using longitudinal samples of subclinical adolescents (Tillfors, Van Zalk, & Kerr, 2013) and early adults (Kashdan et al, 2008) None of these studies examined potential stability or changes in the heterogeneity of social anxiety, which requires moving beyond traditional cluster-analytic techniques. LTA is preferable to commonly used cluster analytic approaches, which do not consider potential stability or change in subgroup membership nor links to later outcomes

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