It is well known that pregnancy is a highly stressful time for women. The stress of pregnancy can affect the way in which women cope with social situations. In this paper, we look at the impact of social anxiety in pregnancy coping strategies during pregnancy.
Many studies have dealt with how fear of being perceived as inadequate influences people’s emotional responses to certain types of events. However, few studies have examined the impact of social anxiety on pregnant women’s decision-making processes during pregnancy.
In this study, we examined how social anxiety affected pregnant women’s decision-making during the first trimester of their pregnancies and found that participants who were high in perceived social anxiety reported more negative coping strategies than those low in perceived social anxiety. Furthermore, participants who were high in perceived social anxiety chose more negative coping strategies than those low in perceived social anxiety when faced with stressful events like job loss or relationship breakups.