The Mediating Effect of Anger Rumination by Effortful Control on the Relationship Social Anxiety and Relational Aggression

This study aims to identify the factors contributing to the process in which negative evaluation of others, a major characteristic of social anxiety, showed as relational aggression, and confirmed the psychological mechanism. To this end, the effect of anger rumination regulated by intentional control, a cognitive emotion regulation mechanism, was verified on the relationship between social anxiety and relational aggression. It was measured through an online self-report questionnaire for 410 people. As a result of analysis using SPSS 22.0 and Process Macro 3.3.5, social anxiety predicted relational aggression statically and the mediating effect of anger rumination conditioned on intentional control in the relationship between social anxiety and relational aggression was significant. These results indicate that higher social anxiety is associated with a higher risk of manifesting relational aggression through anger rumination, and show that the higher level of intentional control, the lower the level of anger rumination. This study identified factors contributing to the process of expression of relational aggression by researching people with social anxiety and further suggest the necessity for a therapeutic intervention that can sublimate the negative emotions of people with social anxiety and can relieve anger by identifying the mechanisms regulating this process.