Parenting styles significantly influence adolescent development. This study focuses on the parental emotionally warm parenting style, examining its relationship with adolescent social anxiety and testing the chain mediation role of self-objectification and appearance anxiety. A survey was conducted with 499 adolescents using: The emotional warmth subscale of the short-form parenting style questionnaire, the Social Appearance Anxiety Scale, the body surveillance subscale of the Objectified Body Consciousness Scale, and the Adolescent Social Anxiety Scale. Key findings revealed: (1) Parental emotional warmth showed a significant negative correlation with adolescent social anxiety; (2) Selfobjectification and appearance anxiety each served as independent mediators between emotional warmth and social anxiety; (3) Self-objectification and appearance anxiety formed a significant chain mediation pathway (Emotional Warmth → Self-Objectification → Appearance Anxiety → Social Anxiety). The study indicates that parental emotional warmth not only directly reduces adolescents’ social anxiety levels but also indirectly promotes positive social adaptation by diminishing their self-objectification tendencies and subsequent appearance anxiety. This finding provides a critical theoretical foundation for the development of family-based multi-target cognitive intervention programs.
Guo et al. (Thu,) studied this question.