The article starts out by stating that "Social phobia, a paralyzing fear of social situations, may be brought on by a combination of genetics and child-rearing methods." Of course, there's nothing we can currently do to change our genetics, but some researchers found that parents who are overprotective of or show rejection towards their children may be putting them at greater risk of developing social phobias.
Another interesting point was that the research team " found no link at all between family functioning and teenage social phobia." Contrary to what the title of my article (also a lyric in West Side Story) may indicate, growing up in a dysfunctional family does not appear to make one destined to failure, socially or otherwise.
I think these findings (at least the latter one) would be very welcome to individuals who have grown up in very poor situations - these results can provide hope, encouragement, and perhaps even a form of verbal persuasion (to help them believe they can succeed, personally and professionally).Bad things happen, but life goes on. I also think it is incredibly important for there to be motivational speakers who have overcome their tremendous obstacles and achieved success, such speakers may be thought to provide a type of vicarious modeling as well as indirect verbal persuasion.
As some of you may have heard, there's a woman coming to campus on the 20th who actually survived a saline abortion. Although I think her talk will partly focus on how young, pregnant women aren't given enough support, from a motivation/emotion standpoint I think her story is incredible. I cannot imagine the feelings one would experience knowing that you have been given the ultimate form of rejection - having people try to kill you. I think another motivation/emotion question that may merit attention in that situation is the impact that an abortion has on the mother. Here I am not just talking about the loss of the baby's life, but (as we have discussed in class) an expectant mother's body undergoes hormonal changes to prepare for the baby. When the changes have been made and there is no longer a baby, this can an even greater sense of loss. To tie this back into material in Reeve's Chapter 12, it could be said that women in this situation are facing both cognitive and biological bases for their conditions and need help that will address both of these bases.
Getting back to the main topic, I think one of the major take away points from the main article is that each person has their own unique set of problems. As discussed in class, it is not desirable to be happy and positive all the time, it is natural to have negative emotions and moods. Negative events provide contrast to positive ones, they have the potential to make people appreciate the "good things" more. Facing serious challenges in one's development might actually make a person stronger and better adjusted to the world, at least for some individuals (and if the challenges are not too overwhelming). This last point most directly relates to goal setting theory in Reeve's Chapter 8.
In 2000, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany found that children who are overprotected or rejected by parents who suffer from depression or anxiety are more likely than other kids to develop social phobias during adolescence. Although they are not destined to develop this mental disorder, it seems that these risk factors make it more likely. They gathered their information for the study during two interviews held 20 months apart. One-thousand subjects between ages 14 and 17 were given questionnaires to access the parenting style they had received growing up and how well the family functioned as a unit. They also diagnosed the teen’s mothers with anxiety, social phobia or depression and children with social phobia if it was present.
While there were no findings to support a link between family functioning and teenage social phobia, they did find that parents who had social phobia, depression, or anxiety disorders or those who abused alcohol, as well as those who were overprotective or rejected them, where at a significantly higher risk of developing social phobia. Although this study does not prove causation, it does tell us that parental histories of mental illness and child-rearing traits play a part in the equation, although we do not know exactly how they interact.
I believe that this finding can help people who have grown up with a mother who was unable to give them the correct amount of love and attention they needed as a child. Although many do develop social phobia, there are a good many that overcome the odds and grow up to be happy, healthy, functioning members of society. These results can be seen as a form of verbal persuasion, (as the original poster pointed out) because they can help these people believe that they can succeed.