Body appreciation and regulatory emotional self efficacy in the association between physical exercise and social anxiety among Chinese college students

Social anxiety is a salient psychological concern among college students and is closely related to interpersonal adjustment and emotional well-being. This cross-sectional study examined the association between physical exercise and social anxiety among Chinese college students, focusing on the statistical indirect roles of body appreciation and regulatory emotional self-efficacy. A total of 1,869 students mainly from Henan Province, China, completed self-report measures of physical exercise, body appreciation, regulatory emotional self-efficacy, and social anxiety.

Pearson correlation analysis and PROCESS Model 6 with 5,000 bootstrap samples were used to examine direct and indirect associations. Physical exercise was negatively associated with social anxiety and positively associated with body appreciation and regulatory emotional self-efficacy. Body appreciation and regulatory emotional self-efficacy were separately involved in significant indirect associations between physical exercise and social anxiety.

A sequential statistical indirect association involving body appreciation and regulatory emotional self-efficacy was also observed. These findings suggest that positive body image and emotion-regulation beliefs are relevant psychological resources in the association between physical exercise and social anxiety. Given the cross-sectional design, the findings should be interpreted as statistical associations rather than evidence of temporal or causal ordering.

The authors thank all participants for their involvement in this study. Department of Physical Education, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, Republic of Korea Xiaolong Zhang, Yufeng Han, Hengyu Li & Weijie Gao School of Physical Education, Northeast Electric Power University, Jilin, China Bijie Vocational and Technical College, Bijie, China Yeungnam University, Gyeongsan, Republic of Korea School of Psychology, Henan University, Kaifeng, China The authors declare no competing interests. This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

The research protocol was approved by the Psychology Research Ethics Committee of the Henan Provincial Key Laboratory of Psychology and Behavior Research (approval number: 20260516102). All participants read the study information and provided electronic informed consent before completing the questionnaire. Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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