Attributional styles in Spanish students of compulsory secondary education with high social anxiety self-reported

Abstract

This paper sought to analyze the relationship between social anxiety and academic causal self-attributions in a sample of 2022 Spanish adolescents (51.1% male) aged 12 to 16. Social anxiety was assessed using the questionnaire Social Phobia and Anxiety Inventory (SPAI). In addition, the Sydney Attribution Scale (SAS) was administered in order to analyze academic self-attributions. The results indicate that students with high social anxiety attribute their failures in reading and math more internally (low capacity and low effort) and less externally than do students without high social anxiety. Also, students with high social anxiety often attribute their success in reading less externally and their success in math less internally (capacity) than do students without high social anxiety. Thus, the results of logistic regression indicate that high social anxiety acts as a positive predictor vis-à-vis causal self-attributions of failures to low capacity and lack of effort whereas high social anxiety acts as a negative predictor self-attributions of success to the ability and chance and attributions of failures to external causes.