Abstract:

Social anxiety has become a serious public health concern in our society. It is imperative to examine risk factors for this problem. Among these predictive variables, self-esteem has been one of the most examined risk factors for social anxiety. Numerous studies have explored the relationship between self-esteem and social anxiety among Chinese students. However, these results are far from consistency. Therefore, this meta-analysis was conducted to explore the relation between self-esteem and social anxiety among Chinese students, and investigate the moderating effects of measurement tools of social anxiety, participant types, and gender. Through literature retrieval, 58 independent effect sizes together with 32181 participants which met the inclusion criteria of meta-analysis were selected. Heterogeneity test indicated that random effects model was appropriate for the meta-analysis. The results of funnel plot and Egger’s intercept illustrated no publication bias. Main-effect test indicated a significant negative correlation between self-esteem and social anxiety (r = -0.35, 95%CI = [-0.39, -0.31]). Further moderation analyses revealed that the association between self-esteem and social anxiety was moderated by measurement tools of social anxiety, but not by the type of participants and gender. The results supported the fear management theories of self-esteem and the cognitive models of social anxiety. Longitudinal or experimental studies are needed in the future to reveal the causal relationship between self-esteem and social anxiety.

Key words: self-esteem, social anxiety, meta-analysis, interaction anxiousness, social avoidance and distress