Conforming to Gender Norms: Longitudinal Associations Between Felt Pressure, Sleep Quality, and Social Anxiety

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: PS 12 Topic - Sex, Gender

Abstract

Children often feel pressured to conform to gender norms. This pressure to conform is associated with social anxiety and negative peer treatment (Smith & Juvonen, 2017; Smith et al., 2018; Van Houtte, 2020). The negative impact of pressure to conform to gender norms has typically been more salient for girls than boys (Van Houtte, 2020). The purpose of this study is to examine how perceived pressure to act like same-gender peers is associated with physical and emotional outcomes in 6th grade children.
Current literature suggests that more pressure to conform to gender norms leads to more social anxiety, yet we know little about how pressure to conform to gender norms may impact sleep, or how this effect on sleep might, in turn, be associated with social anxiety. To further facilitate children’s mental health, it is important to identify how pressure to conform to gender norms interacts with sleep quality mental health outcomes, such as social anxiety. It is possible that more pressure may predict poorer sleep quality, which may in turn predict more social anxiety. There may be a mediational process wherein sleep quality mediates the relationship between pressure and social anxiety. We will examine this assertion in the current study.
Method
Participants were 307 6th graders (53% female) at a school in the Southwestern United States. Students self-reported how much pressure they feel to act like same-gender peers (Egan & Perry, 2001), sleep quality (Storfer-Isser et al., 2013), and social anxiety (La Greca & Stone, 1993). Scales were rated on a 5-point scale, with higher scores indicating greater perceived pressure, better sleep quality, and higher social anxiety, respectively. The current study was limited by only two waves of data. Therefore, data for perceived pressure was taken from the first wave, and sleep quality and social anxiety data were taken from the second wave in order to approximate a mediational process. Thus, we consider the current study a first step in a longer line of research inquiry.
Results
We first separated the sample by gender and ran bivariate correlation analyses between all variables of interest. All relationships were in the expected direction and statistically significant for girls. Perceived pressure predicted lower sleep quality and more social anxiety. Sleep quality predicted less social anxiety. We ran regression analyses to test for preliminary information about mediation for boys and girls. Results indicated that sleep quality is likely a partial mediator between perceived pressure and social anxiety for girls only. No relationships were significant for boys in any analyses.
Discussion
Discussion will focus on the implications of the relationships between perceived pressure, sleep quality, and social anxiety. These include possible interventions to alleviate gender-related pressure children feel to improve sleep quality, and encourage healthier sleep habits to benefit children’s mental health. We will consider the limitations of the current study, such as the need for additional waves of data to examine a full mediational model, and discuss additional directions for future research.

Authors

• McKay Noelle Boyack, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Dawn DeLay, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author