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Co-rumination buffers the link between social anxiety and depressive symptoms in early adolescence
Nejra Van Zalk1, Maria Tillfors2
1Department of Psychology, Social Work and Counselling, University of Greenwich, London, SE9 2UG UK.
Objectives:
We examined whether co-rumination with online friends buffered the link between social anxiety and depressive symptoms over time in a community sample.
Methods:
In a sample of 526 participants (358 girls; M = 14.05) followed at three time points, we conducted a latent cross-lagged model with social anxiety, depressive symptoms, and co-rumination, controlling for friendship stability and friendship quality, and adding a latent interaction between social anxiety and co-rumination predicting depressive symptoms.
Results:
Social anxiety predicted depressive symptoms, but no direct links between social anxiety and co-rumination emerged. Instead, co-rumination buffered the link between social anxiety and depressive symptoms for adolescents with higher but not lower levels of social anxiety.
Conclusions:
These findings indicate that co-rumination exerted a positive influence on interpersonal relationships by diminishing the influence from social anxiety on depressive symptoms over time.
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