COVID Fears and Social Anxiety in College Students

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with numerous negative mental health outcomes such as social anxiety, and lead to a great deal of uncertainty. Intolerance of Uncertainty is a relatively new concept in the psychology literature and has begun to be studied in the context of anxiety. Literature has found a positive correlation between Intolerance of Uncertainty and several types of social anxiety. With these findings, researchers have begun to examine the COVID-19 pandemic to see how Intolerance of Uncertainty affects people’s mental health during the pandemic. Intolerance of Uncertainty may be a mediator between social anxiety and the fears related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper proposed a study to examine whether Intolerance of Uncertainty is a mediator between social anxiety and fear of COVID-19 in college students, and found that Intolerance of Uncertainty acts a mediator between fear of COVID-19 and social anxiety.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	Eastern Illinois University
Supervisor	Wesley Allan (Supervisor)