PERSONALITY TRAITS, COMMUNICATION SKILLS, AND SOCIAL ANXIETY TENDENCIES AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

Social anxiety among university students has emerged as a pressing psychological concern, with documented consequences for academic performance and social functioning, a trend especially pronounced in Pakistan following the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examined the interrelationship between personality traits, communication skills, and social anxiety tendencies among 200 Pakistani undergraduate students (ages 18–25), recruited via convenience sampling, addressing a gap in a literature dominated by Western and East Asian samples. A quantitative, cross-sectional, correlational design was employed, using the Big Five Inventory, the Interpersonal Communication Competence Scale, and the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale. Aggregate personality scores showed no significant relationship with social anxiety, but dimension-level analysis revealed that neuroticism significantly predicted higher social anxiety, while extraversion significantly predicted lower social anxiety; openness, conscientiousness, and agreeableness were non-significant, offering partial support for personality's role. Communication skills emerged as the model's strongest predictor, remaining significantly positively associated with social anxiety even after controlling for personality, a counterintuitive finding suggesting that heightened communicative self-awareness, rather than deficient skill, may underlie social anxiety in this population. The overall model explained 20.2% of the variance in social anxiety tendencies (R² = .202, F(6, 193) = 8.14, p < .001). Gender significantly differentiated neuroticism and overall personality scores, with females scoring higher, though not communication skills or social anxiety tendencies. These findings extend personality–communication–anxiety models to a South Asian context, converge with recent cross-cultural evidence from Nigeria and Türkiye, and underscore the value of communication-focused, emotion-regulation-informed interventions for reducing social anxiety among university students. Implications for psychological counseling, educational practice, and future longitudinal research are discussed.