The Influence Of Adult Attachment On College Students' Social Anxiety: The Mediating Role Of Humor Style

Social anxiety is defined that the individual feels nervous,anxiety and even fear,when the individual takes part in social situations,he is always to take evasive actions to deal with the situations.The social anxiety of college students has achieved fruitful results,however,it is hard to see researches on the factors of social anxiety from the individual difference perspective of adult attachment and humor styles.The current research employed Experiences in Close Relationship Scale(ECR),Humor Styles Questionnaire(HSQ)and Interaction anxiousness Scale(ICS)for measurement in a sample of college students(N=359)mainly from Fudan University,Yunnan University and Shanghai Normal University.The Object of this study is: Explore the main feature of adult attachment and social anxiety of college students;Explore the adult attachment,humor styles and social anxiety of college students in gender and major differences;Explore the relationship of adult attachment,humor styles and social anxiety of college students;Explore whether humor styles mediated the relationship between adult attachment and social anxiety;The result indicated that:(1)The general condition of social anxiety is in a high level(M=52.53,SD=9.35);The distribution of adult attachment styles: secure(14.5%),fearful(46.8%),preoccupied(21.7%)and dismissing(17%);(2)Three dimensions of humor styles has significance difference in gender difference and major difference: male students use less affiliative humor and more aggressive,self-defeating humor than female students;Liberal art students use more self-enhancing humor and less aggressive humor than science students;The social anxiety of male students is significant higher than female students;The social anxiety of Liberal art students is significant higher than science students;(3)Both attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety are negative related to self-enhancing and affiliative humor styles;Both attachment avoidance and attachment anxiety are positive related to aggressive and self-defeating humor styles;Self-defeating humor is positive related to social anxiety;Affiliative and self-enhancing humor are negative related to social anxiety;(4)Affiliative and self-enhancing humor styles mediated the relationships among both attachment anxiety and avoidance and higher levels of social anxiety;These findings have important implications for theories about social anxiety.The clinical importance of assessing and tracking humor styles as a role against social anxiety is discussed.