Development and evaluation of social anxiety based on metacognitive beliefs and early maladaptive schemas mediating by cognitive strategies of emotion regulation in adolescent girls

social anxiety is one of the most common and debilitating disorders in the age of education, and has adverse consequences in many aspects of the lives of people with the disorder. But the main issue of the present study is whether the structural model of social anxiety based on metacognitive beliefs and early maladaptive schemas mediating by cognitive strategies of emotion regulation fits with experimental data?.

The present study was carried out to develop and evaluate the Structural model of social anxiety based on the metacognitive beliefs and early maladaptive schemas mediating by cognitive strategies of emotion regulation.

This study was correlation based on structural equations. From the statistical population female high school students of Kermanshah in academic year 1398-99, 346 students were selected using multi-stage cluster sampling method, and they completed four questionnaires of Metacognitive Questionnaire for Children (MCQ-A), the short form of Early Maladaptive Schemas (YSQ- SF (, Cognitive Emotion Regulation and Social Anxiety.

The results showed that three subscales of. metacognitive beliefs, negative metaworry(β =0/35, p<0.01), cognitive monitoring(β =0/21, p<0.01), and superstitions, punishment and responsibility (SPR) β =0/17, p<0.01), and three domains of early maladaptive schemas, rejection and disconnection(β =0/16, p<0.01), Impaired autonomy and performance(β =0/23, p<0.01) and over vigilance and inhibition(β =0/19, p<0.01), are directly related to social anxiety in addition, two cognitive strategies of emotion regulation, self-blame and rumination, mediate between metacognitive beliefs and schemas with social anxiety and these variabels explain the 0.57 of variance of the social anxiety.

the Results of this study showed that modification the metacognitive beliefs and maladaptive schemas and changing maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies can be useful in preventing the development, continuation and intensification of social anxiety.