Longitudinal relations between social withdrawal subtypes, internalizing problems, and well-being among Chinese youth: exploring within-person and between-person effects

To date, the extant literature on the development and implications of social withdrawal is comprised predominantly of studies focused on between-person associations. As such, we have limited understanding of the intra-individual processes that may underlie these relations. The goal of this study was to explore both between- and within-person associations between different subtypes of social withdrawal (shyness, unsociability, social avoidance), internalizing problems, and indices of well-being in a sample of children and early adolescents from mainland China. A total of 1,001 children (563 boys; 100% Han descent) in grades 4–8 ( M age = 11.71 years, SD = 1.45, range = 7.83–14.17) participated in a four-wave longitudinal data collection procedure. Results from random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM) indicated that social withdrawal subtypes were all associated with indices of internalizing problems (depression, loneliness, social anxiety) and poorer well-being at the between-person level (standardized effect sizes ranged from .21 to .61). Within-person analyses revealed reciprocal relations between shyness and well-being, unsociability and depression, unsociability and loneliness, as well as social avoidance and loneliness. These findings offer preliminary evidence that a within-person perspective could be useful for developing tailored interventions to support children’s psychological adjustment in Chinese society.