Subtypes of social withdrawal and mental health trajectories during COVID-19 pandemic

Jianjie Xu; Ruixi Sun; Yutan Li; Xinyin Chen; Wai Ying Vivien Yiu; Nan Zhou; Yinan Wang; Shuyi Luo; Jingyi Shen; Lijia Liu

doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2022.104203

Subtypes of social withdrawal and mental health trajectories during COVID-19 pandemic

J Res Pers. 2022 Apr:97:104203. doi: 10.1016/j.jrp.2022.104203. Epub 2022 Feb 9.

Authors

Jianjie Xu¹, Ruixi Sun², Yutan Li², Xinyin Chen², Wai Ying Vivien Yiu², Nan Zhou³, Yinan Wang⁴, Shuyi Luo¹, Jingyi Shen⁵, Lijia Liu¹

Affiliations

¹ Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, China.
² Human Development-Quantitative Methods Division, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
³ Department of Educational Psychology and School Counseling, Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, China.
⁴ Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, China.
⁵ Institute of Developmental Psychology, Beijing Normal University, China.

Abstract

The outbreak of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has pervasive implications for the well-being of people, especially for the social withdrawn individuals. The present study examined changes of well-being among people in distinct subgroups of social withdrawal - shyness, unsociability, and social avoidance -in different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic using six-wave longitudinal data in China (N = 222; 54.50% female). Results showed that, in general, well-being sharply decreased from the initial phase to the peak phase of the pandemic, but steadily recovered after the peak phase. People in different withdrawal groups displayed different levels and trajectories of well-being during a period of six months. The current study has implications for developing targeted interventions for vulnerable people in public health crisis.

Keywords: COVID-19; Social withdrawal; Trajectories; Well-being.