Feelings of social interaction anxiety and emotional maturity among Indian Adolescents in Relation to gender and caste

Emotional maturity refers to our ability to understand, and manage, our emotions. Emotional maturity enables us to create the life we desire. A life filled with happiness and fulfillment. We define success in our own terms, not society's, and we strive to achieve it. Our emotional maturity is observed through our thoughts and behaviors. When we are faced with a difficult situation, our level of emotional maturity is one of the biggest factors in determining our ability to cope. Adolescence is a time of transition from childhood to being an independent adult; it is a period of life characterized by change and by moving away from one's family and towards one's peers. Fears about peer rejection emerge at this stage. At the heart of social phobia and anxiety is the belief that one will behave in an embarrassing way in social situations and be negatively socially evaluated by others for doing so. Keeping in view the effect of caste and gender on this time of transition in adolescents this study examined feelings of social interaction anxiety and emotional maturity in male and female adolescents belonging to different caste system in India. A total of 180 students were randomly selected from various schools of Jodhpur city. Of these, each 60 adolescent students were from general caste, schedule caste and schedule tribes caste respectively with age ranging from 15–18 years. Out of these 180 adolescents, 90 adolescent students are male and 90 are female adolescent students. Emotional Maturity Scale (EMS) by Yashvir Singh and Mahesh Bhargava and Brief Form of Social & Phobia & Anxiety Inventory (SPAI-B) for Adolescents by Garcia Lopez were administered individually on all the participants. It was hypothesized that there will be significant differences in the level of social interaction anxiety and emotional maturity of adolescents belonging to different caste. The t-test was applied to analyze the data. The results indicate that there is significant difference between male and female adolescents belonging to different caste on social interaction anxiety and emotional maturity dimensions.