{"doi":"10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1392058","title":"Declines in social–emotional skills in college students during the COVID-19 pandemic","abstract":"Introduction: The present study investigated whether social-emotional skills in first year college students differed before and after the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) lockdowns. Methods: = 1,685) consisted of first year college students (mean age 18.53 years) selected from a broader cohort enrolled in a longitudinal study on college mental health at liberal arts colleges in the United States. In a cohort-sequential design, participants completed an online survey assessing social-emotional skills in January of 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022. Using analysis of covariance, we examined mean differences in social-emotional skills between students who were first years before (January 2018-2020) and after the lockdowns (January 2022), controlling for sociodemographic variables. Results: The post-lockdown group scored significantly lower on emotional control and expressivity and marginally higher on social sensitivity compared to the pre-lockdown group. No group differences in social/emotional expressivity or social control were detected. Discussion: These findings indicate that the COVID-19 lockdowns impaired some, but not all, social-emotional skills in first year college students. Addressing social-emotional skills in college may help to reduce the COVID-19 mental health burden.","journal":"Frontiers in Psychology","year":2024,"id":432368,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":15,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8237,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":593439,"name":"Keith B. Burt","orcid":"0000-0002-4614-9412","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":253946,"name":"Robert W. Moeller","orcid":"0000-0001-9218-4887","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":253947,"name":"Martin Seehuus","orcid":"0000-0002-0068-1489","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":399404,"name":"Janine Cerutti","orcid":"0000-0002-9280-4406","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":86,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:59:35.267142Z","pmid":"39077202","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}