The current study aimed at investigating the relationship of shyness and neuroticism with social anxiety taking into account the mediating role of effortful control. The research method was descriptive-correlational of structural equation modeling. The population included all high school students (adolescents) in the cities of Tehran province studying in one of the public schools of these cities in the year 2021. The sample was selected from the cities of Tehran province by multi-stage cluster sampling (197 girls and 210 boys). Four standard questionnaires including Revised Cheek-Briggs Shyness Scale (1990), Short form of Five Personality Factors Questionnaire (2006), Social Anxiety Scale for Adolescents (1998) and Effortful Control Scale (2003) were used to collect data. The data were analyzed in two sections: descriptive statistics using SPSS23 software and inferential statistics using structural equation modeling in Amos software. The results revealed that only the relationship between shyness with social anxiety (β,= 0. 46, t = 5. 081, sig = 0. 000) and shyness with effortful control (β,=-0. 54, t = 5. 985, sig = 0. 000) were significant (positively and negatively, respectively). Effortful control does not mediate the effect of neuroticism on social anxiety and the effect of shyness on social anxiety. Correspondingly, neuroticism has no effect on social anxiety. Conversely, the whole model comprising the combination of shyness, neuroticism, and effortful control variables could explain social anxiety (R2 = 27. 4%) and the model had an acceptable fit.

Objective: Depression and suicidal thoughts are severe issues in the field of mental health, and identifying factors affecting them can be a practical step to prevent them. This study examined the relationships between effortful control and rumination with suicidal ideation through mediation emotion regulation, entrapment, and depression. Methods: The study used a cross-sectional design. The sample comprised university students (n=222, 75.4% women). Participants completed the effortful control scale, difficulty in emotion regulation scale-short form, entrapment scale, rumination-reflection scale, Beck scale for suicidal ideation, and Beck depression inventory.  Results: The results of the path analysis showed that the variables of rumination and effortful control had a significant effect on suicidal ideation through emotion regulation and depression. Furthermore, entrapment through depression affected suicidal ideation. The proposed model had good fit indices.  Conclusion: It seems that cognitive defects reduce the ability to regulate emotions and make individuals vulnerable to depression and suicidal ideation. The results indicate the importance of strengthening emotion regulation and effortful control to prevent depression and suicidal ideation.

Antisocial behaviors include actions that violate social norms and harm others. These behaviors can stem from individual, environmental, and social factors, such as ineffective upbringing, stress, or social pressures. Managing and reducing such behaviors requires effective educational and social interventions. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to investigate the mediating role of empathy in the relationship between effortful control and antisocial behaviors in adolescents. The population consisted of all high school students in the academic year 2022-2023 in Shiraz city, from whom a sample of 567 students was selected using a multistage cluster random sampling. The questionnaires of effortful control, empathy, and antisocial behaviors  were distributed among them. The proposed model was evaluated using path analysis with the help of SPSS-24 and AMOS-24 software. The findings indicated that the proposed model had a good fit with the data. Additionally, the results showed that effortful control was significantly related to empathy, and empathy was significantly related to antisocial behaviors. However, no significant relationship was found between effortful control and antisocial behaviors. Further, the results revealed that empathy has a mediating role in the relationship between effortful control and antisocial behaviors. Therefore, empathy plays a crucial role in the influence of effortful control on antisocial behaviors and acts as a mediator. Strengthening empathy can thus be an effective approach to reducing antisocial behaviors, even in cases where effortful control does not have a direct impact.