Explaining elevated social anxiety among Asian Americans: Emotional attunement and a cultural double bind.

Abstract

Previous research has documented elevated levels of social anxiety in Asian American college students when compared with their European American peers. The authors hypothesized that higher symptoms among Asians could be explained by cultural differences in attunement to the emotional states of others. Socialization within interdependent cultures may cultivate concerns about accurately perceiving other's emotional responses, yet at the same time, norms governing emotional control may limit competencies in emotion recognition. A sample of 264 Asian American and European American college students completed measures of social anxiety, attunement concerns (shame socialization and loss of face), and attunement competencies (self-reported sensitivity and performance on emotion recognition tasks). Results confirmed that ethnic differences in social anxiety symptoms were mediated by differences in attunement concerns and competencies in emotion recognition. Asian American college students may find themselves in a double bind that leads to social unease because of a cultural emphasis on sensitivity to others' emotions in the midst of barriers to developing this attunement skill set.

The Influence of Individual Factors on Cognitive Process Variables within a Diverse Group Context

“…First, we examined the relationship between individual factors and cognitive process variables using undergraduate students as little attention has been devoted to their experiences of cognitive processes (Goto & Takeuchi 2002;Greenland & Brown 1999), particularly in an Australian context. We substantiated the findings of previous studies mostly conducted in the United States that gender is a predictor of anxiety & apprehension (Tsui, Egan & O'Reilly 1992) and nationality is a predictor of bias (Ancis, Sedlacek & Mohr 2000;Kessler, Michelson & Williams 1999;Kohatsu et al 2000;Pham & Dykstra 1994), stereotyping (Pham & Dykstra 1994) and anxiety & apprehension (Lau et al 2009;Okazaki 1997;Okazaki et al 2002). However, we found that the relationships between gender and bias, and gender and stereotyping were not statistically significant.…”

“…Anxiety is found to be greater in intergroup than in interpersonal encounters (Gudykunst & Shapiro 1996). For instance, research has found ethnic differences in the experiences of anxiety, noting a greater level of social anxiety among Asian American students relative to European American students (Fritz, Chin & DeMarinis 2008;Lau et al 2009) or White American students (Okazaki 1997;Okazaki et al 2002). Similarly, Asians experience more anxiety than Hispanics when interacting with Caucasians (Stephan & Stephan 1989).…”

Ethnic differences in social anxiety between individuals of Asian heritage and European heritage: A meta-analytic review.

“…This indicates a high magnitude effect in the difference in prevalence rates with greater prevalence amongst European-Americans. In contrast, nonepidemiological studies 1 have demonstrated that individuals of Asian-heritage (AH), tended to report higher levels of social anxiety symptoms than did their Europeanheritage (EH) 2 counterparts (Okazaki, 1997;Hsu et al, 2012;Lau et al, 2009;Norasakkunkit and Kalick, 2009), creating an apparent discrepancy in the literature.…”

“…There is evidence to suggest that the prevalence rate of social anxiety differs between European-Americans and ethnic minority groups, particularly Asian-Americans, but the findings appear to be mixed (Okazaki, 1997;Hsu, 2004;Hsu et al, 2007;2008;2012;Lau et al, 2009;Norasakkunkit and Kalick, 2002;Norasakkunkit, Kitayama, and Uchida, 2012;Lee, Okazaki, and Yoo, 2006;Abe and Zane, 1990;Gordon and Teachman, 2008;Hardin and Leong, 2005;Sue et al, 1983;. For instance, some epidemiological studies reported a greater 12-month prevalence rate for social anxiety amongst European-Americans as compared to AsianAmericans (3.01% and 2.3%, respectively; Smith et al, 2006), while others report the difference being as great as 7.3% (European-Americans: 12.6% and Asian-Americans: 5.3%; Asnaani et al, 2010).…”

“…These studies (e.g., Lau, 2009;Hsu et al, 2012;and Okazaki, 1997), using self-report measures of social anxiety, show decent consistency in demonstrating elevated levels of social anxiety symptoms amongst AH individuals compared to EH individuals. For example, in a study examining a group of 200 AH and 200 EH undergraduates recruited from the registrar's list, Okazaki (2002) found that AH students scored significantly higher than EH students on the intensity of social anxiety as measured by the SPAI.…”