The Mediating Role of Emotion Regulation Strategies in the Relationship Between Self-esteem and Social Anxiety among College Students

To explore the influencing mechanism of social anxiety among college students, a survey was conducted on 574 college students using the Self-esteem Scale, Social Anxiety Scale, and Emotion Regulation Scale. The results indicated that, self-esteem was significantly negatively correlated with social anxiety and significantly positively correlated with emotion regulation, while emotion regulation was significantly negatively correlated with social anxiety. Emotion regulation played a partial mediating role between self-esteem and social anxiety, with the mediating effect of cognitive reappraisal being 23.68% and that of expressive suppression being 13.16%. This suggests that self-esteem is not only an important inhibitory factor for social anxiety among college students, but also influences their social anxiety through emotion regulation, especially the cognitive reappraisal strategy plays an important role in reducing social anxiety among college students.