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Shyness in late childhood: relations with attributional styles and self-esteem
1Department of Psychological Studies, Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong, China.
Background:
Shyness in late childhood is related to social and psychological problems. The present study examined the relations among shyness, attributional styles and self-esteem. It was hypothesized that self-esteem mediated the effects of attributional styles on shyness.
Methods:
Self-reported data on degree of shyness, attributional styles and self-esteem were obtained from 326 Chinese children with mean age of 10.85 years.
Results:
It was found that positive attributional styles predicted shyness in the negative direction and the effects were fully mediated by self-esteem, and negative attributional styles predicted shyness in the positive direction both directly and through self-esteem.
Conclusion:
The results imply that how children attribute positive and negative outcomes affect both self-esteem and shyness. It is suggested that practitioners should conduct attribution-retraining workshops for shy children and help teachers and parents learn how to mitigate negative attributional style and foster positive attributional styles in children.
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