Personality Traits and Anxiety Disorders of Vietnamese Early Adolescents: The Mediating Role of Social Support and Self-Esteem

Abstract

Aims: This study aims to investigate the relationship between personality traits and anxiety disorder, in which the mediating role of social support and self-esteem is also explored. Background: In Vietnam, anxiety disorder is a major challenge affecting adolescents’ social and academic functioning. Objectives: Examine whether adolescents’ personality traits are related to their anxiety disorders and whether social support and self-esteem mediate the relationship between personality and anxiety disorders. Methods: A sample population of 582 early adolescents at four secondary schools in Vietnam voluntarily participated in the study through the completion of the big-five personality dimension test, the social support scale, self-esteem scale and generalized anxiety disorder questionnaire. The SPSS statistical software was used to conduct descriptive statistics and analyses of Cronbach’s Alpha, Pearson correlations and Regression. The mediation analysis of self – esteem and social support was conducted to determine the relationship between personality traits and anxiety disorder through SPSS PROCESS Macro. Results: Results revealed that the neuroticism trait had a positive correlation with anxiety disorders (r = 0.56), while the agreeableness and conscientiousness traits showed negative correlations (r = - 0.08 and r = - 0.15, respectively). The regression indicated that approximately 33.4% of the variance anxiety could be explained by these traits (R 2 = 0.334; F = 55.414; p < 0.01). Bootstrapping and Sobel analyses showed that social support and self-esteem mediated the association between neuroticism trait and anxiety disorder (z = 3.00 and z = 5.45, respectively). Conclusion: The findings interpreted that Vietnamese educators can reduce symptoms of anxiety for early adolescents with high neuroticism trait by helping them get more social support from others and improve role of self-esteem.