(PS2-A15) Latent Profiles of Social Anxiety and Implicit Theories of Social Anxiety in European Americans and Asian Americans

The purpose of this study was to examine social anxiety as well as individuals’ implicit theories about social anxiety. Previous research has identified ethnic differences in self-reported social anxiety symptoms between Asian Americans (AA) and European Americans (EA); little research has been conducted on between-cultural differences in implicit theories of social anxiety, which may play an important role in explaining ethnic differences in social anxiety that have been established in the literature. Implicit theories refer to two different assumptions people may make about the malleability of personal attributes: the belief that a personal attribute is a fixed, non-malleable trait-like entity is referred to as entity theory, and the belief that a personal attribute is a malleable quality that can be changed and developed is referred to as incremental theory (Dweck et al., 1995). Examination of implicit theories of social anxiety provides a unique opportunity to demonstrate the important role implicit theories may play in explaining ethnic differences in social anxiety that have been established in the literature. Person-centered statistical techniques, such as latent class analysis or latent profile analysis, provide important insight regarding different patterns of symptomology for a given population. These methodological approaches can be used to group individuals based on their pattern of symptoms, resulting in common profiles that may be more homogenous than diagnostic groups. As such, the current study aims to identify latent sub-groups of individuals based on their self-reported levels of social anxiety and implicit beliefs.

Participants included 226 AA and 251 EA college students that were 72.8% female and had a mean age of 19.3 years (SD = 2.3). All participants completed the short forms of the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale and Social Phobia Scale (SIAS-6 and SPS-6; Peters et al., 2012), and an adapted measure of implicit theories of social anxiety based on Zhang & Xu (2018)'s measure of entity versus incremental theories of shyness to explore potential cultural differences in implicit beliefs about social anxiety. Using these three measures, we examined potential profile structures and ultimately selected the five-profile model based on superior fit indices (e.g., entropy = .743, significant LMR test (p < .05) compared to four-profile model) and clearer interpretability when compared to other profile options. The five profiles were labeled as: “EA, Low Anxiety, and Entity Theories” (7.7%), “AA, Moderate Anxiety, Mixed Implicit Theories” (26.4%), “Low Anxiety, Incremental Theories” (23.2%), “High Anxiety, Entity Theories” (10.88%), and “Moderate Anxiety, Mixed Implicit Theories” (31.8%). These findings will help explain how social anxiety and implicit theories are related for AA and EA college students. Further findings and implications of implicit theories of social anxiety on research and clinical practice will be discussed.