Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-dfsvx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T03:32:07.143Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Co-occurrence of social anxiety and depression symptoms in adolescence: differential links with implicit and explicit self-esteem?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2011

P. J. de Jong ,
B. E. Sportel ,
E. de Hullu  and
M. H. Nauta
P. J. de Jong*
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
B. E. Sportel
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Centre Groningen, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
E. de Hullu
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
M. H. Nauta
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Centre Groningen, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
*
*Address for correspondence: Dr P. J. de Jong, Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Groningen, Grote Kruisstraat 2/1, 9712 TS Groningen, The Netherlands. (Email: p.j.de.jong@rug.nl)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background

Social anxiety and depression often co-occur. As low self-esteem has been identified as a risk factor for both types of symptoms, it may help to explain their co-morbidity. Current dual process models of psychopathology differentiate between explicit and implicit self-esteem. Explicit self-esteem would reflect deliberate self-evaluative processes whereas implicit self-esteem would reflect simple associations in memory. Previous research suggests that low explicit self-esteem is involved in both social anxiety and depression whereas low implicit self-esteem is only involved in social anxiety. We tested whether the association between symptoms of social phobia and depression can indeed be explained by low explicit self-esteem, whereas low implicit self-esteem is only involved in social anxiety.

Method

Adolescents during the first stage of secondary education (n=1806) completed the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) to measure symptoms of social anxiety and depression, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) to index explicit self-esteem and the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure implicit self-esteem.

Results

There was a strong association between symptoms of depression and social anxiety that could be largely explained by participants' explicit self-esteem. Only for girls did implicit self-esteem and the interaction between implicit and explicit self-esteem show small cumulative predictive validity for social anxiety, indicating that the association between low implicit self-esteem and social anxiety was most evident for girls with relatively low explicit self-esteem. Implicit self-esteem showed no significant predictive validity for depressive symptoms.

Conclusions

The findings support the view that both shared and differential self-evaluative processes are involved in depression and social anxiety.

Keywords

Adolescenceanxietyautomatic associationsdepressionimplicit association testimplicit self-esteem
Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , March 2012 , pp. 475 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acarturk, C, Smit, F, de Graaf, R, van Straten, A, ten Have, M, Cuijpers, P (2009). Incidence of social phobia and identification of its risk indicators: a model for prevention. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 119, 62–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beck, AT, Emery, G, Greenberg, RL (1996). Cognitive therapy for the evaluation anxieties. In Handbook of the Treatment of the Anxiety Disorders (ed. Lindemann, C. G.), pp. 235–260. Northvale: Aronson.Google Scholar
Bos, AER, Huijding, J, Muris, P, Vogel, LRR, Biesheuvel, J (2010). Global contingent and implicit self-esteem and psychopathological symptoms in adolescents. Personality and Individual Differences 48, 311–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bos, AER, Muris, P, Mulkens, S, Schaalma, HP (2006). Changing self-esteem in children and adolescents: a roadmap for future interventions. Netherlands Journal of Psychology 62, 26–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bosson, JK, Brown, RP, Zeigler-Hill, V, Swann, WB (2003). Self-enhancement tendencies among people with high explicit self-esteem: the moderating role of implicit self-esteem. Self and Identity 2, 169–187.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bosson, JK, Swann, WB, Pennebaker, JW (2000). Stalking the perfect measure of implicit self-esteem: the blind man and the elephant revisited? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 79, 631–643.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bouvard, M, Guerin, J, Rion, AC, Bouchard, C, Ducottet, E, Sechaud, M, Mollard, E, Grillet, P, Cottraux, J (1999). Psychometric study of the social self-esteem inventory of Lawson et al. (1979). European Review of Applied Psychology 49, 165–172.Google Scholar
Brown, GW, Harris, TO, Eales, MJ (1996). Social factors and comorbidity of depressive and anxiety disorders. British Journal of Psychiatry 168 (Suppl. 30), 50–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chorpita, BF, Moffitt, CE, Gray, J (2005). Psychometric properties of the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale in a clinical sample. Behaviour Research and Therapy 43, 309–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, DA, Beck, AT, Alford, BA (1999). Scientific Foundations of Cognitive Theory and Therapy of Depression. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ.Google Scholar
Clark, DM, Wells, A (1995). A cognitive model of social phobia. In Social Phobia: Diagnosis Assessment and Treatment (ed. Heimberg, R., Liebowitz, M., Hope, D. A. and Schneier, F. R.), pp. 69–93. Guilford Press: New York.Google Scholar
Clerkin, EM, Teachman, BA (2010). Training implicit social anxiety associations: an experimental intervention. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 24, 300–308.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
De Houwer, J (2001). A structural and process analysis of the implicit association test. Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology 37, 443–451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Houwer, J (2006). What are implicit measures and why are we using them? In Handbook of Implicit Cognition and Addiction (ed. Wiers and, R. W.Stacy, A. W.), pp. 11–28. Sage Publications, Inc.: Thousand Oaks, CA.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Jong, PJ (2002). Implicit self-esteem and social anxiety: differential self-favouring effects in high and low anxious individuals. Behaviour Research and Therapy 40, 501–508.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
de Jong, PJ, van den Hout, MA, Rietbroek, H, Huijding, J (2003). Dissociations between implicit and explicit attitudes toward phobic stimuli. Cognition and Emotion 17, 521–545.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
De Raedt, R, Schacht, R, Franck, E, De Houwer, J (2006). Self-esteem and depression revisited: implicit positive self-esteem in depressed patients? Behaviour Research and Therapy 44, 1017–1028.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fiedler, K, Messner, C, Bluemke, M (2006). Unresolved problems with the ‘I’ the ‘A’ and the ‘T’: a logical and psychometric critique of the Implicit Association Test (IAT). European Review of Social Psychology 17, 74–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franck, E, De Raedt, R, Barbez, C, Rosseel, Y (2008). Psychometric properties of the Dutch Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Psychologica Belgica 48, 25–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franck, E, De Raedt, R, Dereu, M, Van den Abbeele, D (2007). Implicit and explicit self-esteem in currently depressed individuals with and without suicidal ideation. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 38, 75–85.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gawronski, B, Bodenhausen, GV (2006). Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: an integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change. Psychological Bulletin 132, 692–731.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gemar, MC, Segal, ZV, Sagrati, S, Kennedy, SJ (2001). Mood-induced changes on the Implicit Association Test in recovered depressed patients. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 110, 282–289.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ginsburg, GS, La-Greca, AM, Silverman, WK (1998). Social anxiety in children with anxiety disorders: relation with social and emotional functioning. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 26, 175–185.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Glashouwer, KA, de Jong, PJ (2010). Disorder-specific automatic self-associations in anxiety and depression: results of the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety. Psychological Medicine 40, 1101–1011.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenwald, AG, McGhee, DE, Schwartz, JLK (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: the implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, 1464–1480.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Greenwald, AG, Nosek, BA, Banaji, MR (2003). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: I. An improved scoring algorithm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85, 197–216.Google ScholarPubMed
Hermans, D, De Houwer, J (1994). Affective and subjective familiarity ratings of 740 Dutch words. Psychologica Belgica 34, 115–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huijding, J, de Jong, PJ (2006). Specific predictive power of automatic spider-related affective associations for controllable and uncontrollable fear responses toward spiders. Behaviour Research and Therapy 44, 161–176.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huijding, J, Wiers, RW, Field, AP (2010). The assessment of fear-related automatic associations in children and adolescents In Information Processing Biases and Anxiety: A Developmental Perspective (ed. Hadwin and, J. A.Field, A.), pp. 151–182. Wiley: Chichester.Google Scholar
Koster, EHW, De Raedt, R, Goeleven, E, Franck, E, Crombez, G (2005). Mood-congruent attentional bias in dysphoria: maintained attention to and impaired disengagement from negative information. Emotion 5, 446–455.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Leyman, L, De Raedt, R, Schacht, R, Koster, EHW (2007). Attentional biases for angry faces in unipolar depression. Psychological Medicine 37, 393–402.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ohayon, MM, Schatzberg, AF (2010). Social phobia and depression: prevalence and comorbidity. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 68, 235–243.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ormel, J, Oldehinkel, AJ, Vollebergh, W (2004). Vulnerability before, during and after a major depressive episode. Archives of General Psychiatry 61, 990–996.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Orth, U, Robins, RW, Trzesniewski, KH, Maes, J, Schmitt, M (2009). Low self-esteem is a risk factor for depressive symptoms from young adulthood to old age. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 118, 472–478.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pacini, R, Epstein, S (1999). The relation of rational and experiential information processing styles to personality basic beliefs and the ratio-bias phenomenon. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76, 972–987.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pelham, BW, Koole, SL, Hardin, CD, Hetts, JJ, Seah, E, DeHart, T (2005). Gender moderates the relation between implicit and explicit self-esteem. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 41, 84–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Penninx, BWJH, Beekman, ATF, Smit, JH, Zitman, FG, Nolen, WA, Spinhoven, P, Cuijpers, P, de Jong, PJ, van Marwijck, HWJ, Assendelft, WJJ, van der Meer, K, Verhaak, P, Wensing, M, de Graaf, R, Hoogendijk, WJ, Ormel, J, van Dyck, R, (2008). The Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety (NESDA): Rationale, objectives and methods. International Journal of Methods in Psychiatric Research 17, 121–140.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rapee, RM, Heimberg, RG (1997). A cognitive-behavioral model of anxiety in social phobia. Behaviour Research and Therapy 35, 741–756.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Reijneveld, SA, Veenstra, R, de Winter, AF, Verhulst, FC, Ormel, J, de Meer, G (2010). Area deprivation affects behavioral problems of young adolescents in mixed urban and rural areas: the TRAILS study. Journal of Adolescent Health 46, 189–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Risch, AK, Buba, A, Birk, U, Morina, N, Steffens, MC, Stangier, U (2010). Implicit self-esteem in recurrently depressed patients. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 41, 199–206.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosenberg, M (1965). Society and the Adolescent Self-Image. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schröder-Abé, M, Rudolph, A, Schüz, A (2007). High implicit self-esteem is not necessarily advantageous: discrepancies between explicit and implicit self-esteem and their relationship with anger expression and psychological health. European Journal of Personality 21, 319–339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spalding, LR, Hardin, CD (1999). Unconscious unease and self-handicapping: behavioral consequences of individual differences in implicit and explicit self-esteem. Psychological Science 10, 535–539.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strack, F, Deutsch, R (2004). Reflective and impulsive determinants of social behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Review 8, 220–247.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tanner, RJ, Stopa, L, De Houwer, J (2006). Implicit views of the self in social anxiety. Behaviour Research and Therapy 44, 1397–1409.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vater, A, Schröder-Abé, M, Schütz, A, Lammers, C-H, Roepke, S (2010). Discrepancies between explicit and implicit self-esteem are linked to symptom severity in borderline personality disorder. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 41, 357–364.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vervoort, L, Prins, PJM, Wolters, LH, Hogendoorn, SM, de Haan, E, Nauta, MH, Boer, F (2010). Automatic evaluations in clinically anxious and non-anxious children and adolescents. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology 39, 481–491.CrossRefGoogle Scholar