Understanding Pathways to Social Anxiety and Paranoia in Adolescents: The Role of Bullying, Discrimination, and Social Threat Sensitivity

Aims This study investigated the relationships between bullying, discrimination, and threat sensitivity as common factors underlying social anxiety and paranoia and investigated whether threat sensitivity mediates these associations. Methods A Qualtrics online survey was conducted with UK adolescents aged 14 to 17, involving 604 participants. Quota sampling was employed to ensure balanced representation across age groups and genders. Relationships among study variables were examined using hierarchical regression and path analysis. Results The results showed that social anxiety was predominantly predicted by paranoia, bullying, and threat sensitivity, which together explained 51.6% of the variance. Paranoia was mainly predicted by social anxiety, with bullying and discrimination also contributing, accounting for 58.4%. A path model indicated that threat sensitivity mediated the effects of bullying and discrimination on social anxiety and paranoia, though its independent effect on paranoia depended on the assumed direction of the social anxiety-paranoia relationship. Conclusions Bullying and discrimination consistently predicted paranoia regardless of the assumed direction of its relationship with social anxiety. This highlights the need for targeted interventions, including anti-bullying initiatives, that may benefit both social anxiety and paranoia.