Motivations for social withdrawal and academic adjustment in emerging adulthood

Abstract While social withdrawal in childhood is typically associated with lower academic functioning, little is known about how motivations for social withdrawal may be connected to academic adjustment in emerging adulthood. The purpose of the present study was to examine associations between social withdrawal motivations (i.e., shyness, avoidance and unsociability) and indices of academic adjustment, including academic achievement (i.e., grade point average [GPA]) and academic motivation (i.e., intrinsic value, self‐efficacy and test anxiety), while accounting for gender and conscientiousness. Participants were 623 emerging adults between the ages of 18 and 25 ( M age = 20.15, SD = 1.67; 79% female) who were currently attending university. Hierarchical regression results showed that shyness was negatively associated with intrinsic value and self‐efficacy. Whereas shyness was positively associated with test anxiety, avoidance was negatively associated with test anxiety. Social withdrawal motivations were not associated with GPA. The findings suggest that some motivations for social withdrawal play a role in university students’ academic motivation, but not their academic achievement.