Relationship between social anxiety and study addiction

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Who: Wiktor Wróbel
Where: International Sopot Youth Conference 2017

Abstract: In Europe alone there was 19.6 million university students in 2013. About 10% of all students has social anxiety disorder – an extreme end of social anxiety continuum. Social anxiety is characterized by fear of being negatively evaluated by others. This aliment produces negative emotions that one has to cope with. One of the possible ways of doing so is by studying. This in turn may result in further problems as sometimes students may develop study addiction – an excessive, uncontrollable motivation to study which is related to deteriorated psychosocial functioning. The aim of this research was to determine the possible relation between social anxiety and study addiction.
The sample was comprised of 1157 undergraduate students: 601 females (51.9%), 546 males (47.2%) and 10 persons (0.9%) who did not report gender, mean age was M = 20.33 years (SD = 1.68). The individuals were studying at the universities from Gdańsk. Students were from different faculties, courses of study and years of study.
Results showed that social anxiety was positively associated with study addiction and that social anxiety was predicting study addiction above and beyond demographics and personality. It is important to understand the mechanisms of developing this addiction, because it seems like a socially acceptable manner of coping with social anxiety. However, it does not help achieving better grades, but takes its toll on one’s health and quality of life. Furthermore, it is thought be a precursor or an early stage of work addiction.