Abstract Background Social anxiety is common among college students, which seriously affects their academic achievement and interpersonal relationship quality. Traditional intervention methods often focus on cognitive restructuring and behavioral exposure. However, positive psychology believes that cultivating individuals' intrinsic strengths and positive experiences (such as gratitude, hope, and self compassion) can promote mental health. Although preliminary studies have shown the effectiveness of positive psychological intervention, its mechanism of action is not yet clear. Therefore, the study aims to compare the intervention effects of positive psychology group intervention and cognitive-behavioral group therapy on social anxiety among college students, and explore whether the enhancement of "self compassion" is a key mediating factor in the effectiveness of positive psychology intervention. Methods The study used a randomized controlled trial design to randomly assign 150 college students who met the screening criteria for social anxiety into three groups: (1) the Positive Psychological Intervention group (PPI) received group activities centered on strength identification, gratitude exercises, and self-compassion for 8 weeks; (2) the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy group (CBT) received 8 weeks of standardized group therapy with thinking fallacy recognition and social exposure as the core; (3) Control group (CG). At three time points: before the intervention (T1), after the intervention (T2), and at the 3-month follow-up (T3), all participants completed the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) and the Self-Compassion Scale. The study will use repeated measures analysis of variance to test the intervention effect, and use the mediating effect model to analyze the role of self-compassion in the PPI group. Results Table 1 showed that after the intervention (T2), the LSAS scores of the PPI group and the CBT group were significantly lower than those of the CG group, and there was no significant difference between the two intervention groups, indicating that both had significant and comparable immediate efficacy. During the 3-month follow-up period (T3), the PPI group maintained a good effect, while the CBT group showed a slight rebound, making the PPI group slightly better than the CBT group in terms of long-term effects. Crucially, only the PPI group experienced a significant increase in self-compassion levels after the intervention. Discussion Studies have shown that positive psychological interventions can reduce participants' levels of social anxiety by enhancing their self-compassion. Positive psychology plays a role by accurately improving the individual's ability to "self-compassion." This suggests that for people with social anxiety, learning how to be friendly and tolerant of themselves in social situations is more fundamental than simply challenging negative thinking. In the future, the design of intervention programs can be more focused on the cultivation of self-compassion, and can even be used as an independent and efficient core intervention module.
Wei Zhang (Sun,) studied this question.
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