Unsociability in Middle Childhood: Conceptualization, Assessment, and Associations with Socioemotional Functioning
By Robert J. Coplan, M. Weeks. Merrill-Palmer quarterly, 2010
108 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The goal of this study was to explore the socioemotional adjustment of unsociable (versus shy) children in middle childhood. The participants in this study were 186 children aged 6-8 years (<i>M</i><sub xmlns:m="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">age</sub> = 7.59 years, <i>SD</i> = .31). Multisource assessment was employed, including maternal ratings, teacher ratings, and individual child interviews. Results provided some of the first evidence to suggest that unsociability can be distinguished from shyness in middle childhood. Shy children evidenced more internalizing problems, peer difficulties, and loneliness as compared to unsociable and nonwithdrawn comparison children. In contrast, aside from a greater tendency to play alone, unsociable children did not differ from nonwithdrawn comparison peers. However, a gender difference emerged, with unsociable boys appearing to be more prone to experiencing difficulties with peers. Results are discussed in terms of the assessment, meaning, and implications of different forms of social withdrawal in middle childhood.
Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Education, Social Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/41d06b52e129d0fa143bfd8b6e1463d3cba17733
How researchers see this paper
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In Clinical Psychology
- Xinyin Chen
- Robert J. Coplan
- Julie C. Bowker
- Junsheng Liu
- Xuechen Ding
- Wendy E. Ellis
- L. Zarbatany
- Kenneth H. Rubin
In Education
- Xinyin Chen
- Robert J. Coplan
- Julie C. Bowker
- Junsheng Liu
- Xuechen Ding
- Wendy E. Ellis
- L. Zarbatany
- Kimberley A. Arbeau
In Social Psychology
Citations in the corpus
- Shyness and Unsociability and Their Relations With Adjustment in Chinese and Canadian Children (2015, background): “Unsociability or social disinterest refers to the nonfearful preference for solitude (Coplan & Weeks, 2010a).”
- The handbook of solitude: Psychological perspectives on social isolation, social withdrawal, and being alone. (2013, background): “…number of related terms have been used to describe individual differences in the non‐fearful desire for spending time alone, including unsociability (Coplan & Weeks, 2010), social disinterest (Coplan et al., 2004), affinity for aloneness (Goossens, 2014), solitropic orientation (Leary et al.,…”