The bivalent fear of evaluation model of social anxiety: further integrating findings on fears of positive and negative evaluation

Accumulating evidence supports the premise that fear of evaluation in general is important in social anxiety, including fear of positive evaluation (FPE) as well as fear of negative evaluation (FNE). This study tested various hypotheses pertaining to a novel, expanded conceptualization of social anxiety involving these two distinct fears: the bivalent fear of evaluation (BFOE) model. Responses from a large undergraduate sample (N = 585) were examined. In addition, responses from a subsample of participants qualifying for a probable diagnosis of social anxiety disorder (SAD; n = 133) were examined, via mediational analyses, for potential mechanisms underlying FPE within highly socially anxious individuals. FPE exhibited a unique and significantly stronger relationship with concerns of social reprisal due to making positive impressions than did FNE. FPE related uniquely and negatively to trait positive affect/automatic thoughts, whereas FNE, FPE, and social anxiety all related uniquely and positively to trait negative affect/automatic thoughts. FPE, FNE, and social anxiety all related uniquely and positively to disqualification of positive social outcomes (DPSO). However, FPE related most strongly to DPSO attributions at the level of the self, and these attributions mediated the relationship between FPE and negative automatic thoughts in an analog clinical sample. Concerns of social reprisal due to making positive impressions on others mediated the relationship between FPE and DPSO attributions to others in an analog clinical sample. The obtained findings replicate and extend support for the BFOE model of social anxiety. Implications for the theoretical conceptualization and treatment of SAD are discussed.     

Sibling relationships and civic engagement: A longitudinal study of Chinese young adults

This study examined the longitudinal associations of sibling intimacy and conflict with civic attitudes and behaviours among Chinese young adults. At two time points separated by about 12 months, questionnaire data were collected from 272 Chinese college students (mean age at Time 1 = 19.68 years; 69% female), students who studied in Hong Kong and had at least one sibling. Students rated their intimacy and conflict with their siblings and their parents at Time 1, and their civic attitudes and behaviours at both time points. Hierarchical regression revealed that, controlling for demographic characteristics and parent–child intimacy and conflict, sibling intimacy predicted increases in both civic attitudes and behaviours. Sibling conflict was a non-significant predictor, however. Findings highlighted the roles of siblings in understanding civic development in young adulthood and the utility of targeting sibling intimacy as means to foster young adults' positive attitudes to and active participation in civic activities.     

Self-compassion induction enhances recovery from social stressors: Comparing adults with social anxiety disorder and healthy controls

Background and objectives: This study evaluates the process and consequence of inducing self-compassion during recovery from social performance stressors. Though interest in self-compassion as an intervention target is growing, extant findings suggest that initially cultivating self-compassion can be challenging for those with high self-criticism and anxiety, common features of social anxiety disorder (SAD).

Design: Quasi-experimental design.

Methods: The current study evaluates the feasibility, content, and outcomes of a brief written self-compassion induction administered after consecutive laboratory social stressors, among adults with SAD (n?=?21) relative to healthy controls (HC; n?=?35).

Results: Findings demonstrate the feasibility of employing a written self-compassion induction among adults with (and without) SAD, reveal group differences in written responses to the induction, and suggest that the SAD group benefitted more from the induction than the HC group, based on greater reductions in state anxiety and greater increases in self-compassion during stressor recovery. Greater use of negative affect words within written responses to the self-compassion induction, but not during general writing, predicted lower subsequent state anxiety across groups, by a medium effect size.

Conclusions: Collectively, the findings support the feasibility and utility of cultivating self-compassion among adults with SAD.     

The neural basis of primate social communication

A sophisticated ability both to generate displays of emotion and to respond to expressive behaviors of other individuals has emerged as a specialization in the course of primate evolution. Studies of the social behavior of nonhuman primates, especially those most related to ourselves, indicate that monkeys and apes are able to interpret social signals so as to assess the motivations of others. Studies of brain activity in monkeys looking at pictures of faces, facial expressions, and body movements, reveal regions of apparent specialized responsiveness to visual social stimuli. The existence of a discrete neural system in humans for cognition which generates a psychological model of others is suggested by patterns of deficit seen in certain neurologic syndromes. Empathy has several components and appears to lie on an evolutionary continuum.Based on a presentation given in New Orleans on February 17, 1990, at the AAAS symposium Empathy in Infancy and Later Development. Supported by the Department of Veterans Affairs.     

The neural basis of speech parsing in children and adults

Word segmentation, detecting word boundaries in continuous speech, is a fundamental aspect of language learning that can occur solely by the computation of statistical and speech cues. Fifty‐four children underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while listening to three streams of concatenated syllables that contained either high statistical regularities, high statistical regularities and speech cues, or no easily detectable cues. Significant signal increases over time in temporal cortices suggest that children utilized the cues to implicitly segment the speech streams. This was confirmed by the findings of a second fMRI run, in which children displayed reliably greater activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus when listening to ‘words’ that had occurred more frequently in the streams of speech they had just heard. Finally, comparisons between activity observed in these children and that in previously studied adults indicate significant developmental changes in the neural substrate of speech parsing.     

A cross-sectional evaluation of the factorial invariance of anxiety sensitivity in adolescents and young adults

This study examined the cross-sectional factorial invariance of anxiety sensitivity in an ethnically diverse sample of adolescents (n = 173; mean age 15.5 years) and young adults (n = 291; mean age 20.1 years). Research in adult and youth samples suggests that anxiety sensitivity is best understood as a hierarchical construct with several lower-order factors. Factor models based on previous research using both adult and youth samples were compared and a hierarchical model with three lower-order factors provided the best fit to the data. Results supported the hypothesis that the factor structure of the Anxiety Sensitivity Index was invariant across age and gender. The factor scores also demonstrated differential correlations with symptoms of anxiety and depression. Results are discussed with regard to construct validation and understanding the structure of anxiety sensitivity in youth.     

Consumers who avoid relationships: social anxiety in commercial contexts

This article focuses on the study of consumers with social anxiety who avoid relationships in commercial settings. While relationship marketing recommends fostering personal relationships with customers, our research shows that too much closeness can be a problem for people with social anxiety who are apprehensive about interacting with strangers. A qualitative study based on 17 in‐depth interviews with individuals with social anxiety allows us to specify the contexts that give rise to social anxiety—physical closeness between consumer and salesperson, when the interaction is relatively long, in new situations, or in situations designed to be repeated. Our study shows that social anxiety has psychological, economic, and time costs for the consumer. Additionally, the study sets out the relational preferences of people with social anxiety, showing that they prefer neutral, distant or anonymous relationships, that they do not like or benefit from special treatment, nor do they like to be surprised by novelty. The conventional recommendations of relational marketing (e.g., creating a close relationship with customers) are partly called into question by this study, which shows that not all individuals necessarily want such relationships in a commercial context. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conspiracy thinking and state-trait anxiety in young Polish adults

The relationships among conspiracy thinking and state and trait anxiety were examined with 118 high school students who were assessed using the Conspiracy Beliefs Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Among boys there was a positive correlation between scores on A-Trait and the conspiracy thinking (r = .39) whereas among girls there was a negative correlation between these scores (r = -.32).     

Semantic satiation in healthy young and older adults

In four experiments, semantic satiation was investigated in young and old adults. In the first two experiments, subjects were repeatedly presented a word (e.g.,dog) and then were presented a pair of words (e.g.,dog-cat ordog-chair) for a relatedness decision. The results of both experiments indicated that for the young adults, the relatedness effect (the difference between response latency on related and unrelated trials) decreased as a function of the number of times the satiated word was repeated, whereas for the older adults, there was no evidence of a decrease in the relatedness effect across repetitions of the satiated word. In the third experiment, we investigated whether phonological codes are also susceptible to satiation. This experiment was similar to the first two experiments with the exception that subjects made rhyme decisions (same-claim vs.same-dime) instead of semantic relatedness decisions. The results of this experiment did not yield any evidence of satiation for either the young adults or the older adults. The final experiment eliminated a simple decrease in attentional alertness or fatigue account of the semantic satiation effects found in the first two experiments. In this experiment, the repeated word was always unrelated to the pair of words presented for the relatedness decision. The results of this experiment did not yield any evidence of semantic satiation for either the young or the older adults. The discussion focuses on the mechanisms underlying semantic satiation and the implications of age-related changes in these mechanisms.     

Childhood abuse and vulnerability to depression: Cognitive scars in otherwise healthy young adults

Models of depression vulnerability posit that negative early experiences, such as exposure to childhood abuse (CA), increase vulnerability to depression later in life. Though most victims of CA do not go on to develop depression, the question remains as to whether these individuals retain cognitive ‘scars’ that may contribute to depression vulnerability. The present study examined the relationship between self-reported, retrospective CA and cognitive vulnerability to depression in a carefully selected sample of young adults without current or past psychopathology. We measured cognitive vulnerability with both a self-report questionnaire, the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale (DAS), and a measure of information processing bias, the Scrambled Sentences Test (SST). Self-reported severity of CA was associated with increased cognitive vulnerability to depression on both the DAS and SST. Vulnerability to depression as measured by the SST, but not by the DAS, prospectively predicted increases in depressive symptoms over a 6-month period. Scores on the SST also interacted with CA to predict increases in depressive symptoms. These findings demonstrate the pernicious effects of CA even in those without current or past psychopathology.     

Culture of honour theory and social anxiety: Cross-regional and sex differences in relationships among honour-concerns,social anxiety and reactive aggression

According to the Appraisal-Tendency Framework (Han, Lerner, & Keltner, 2007), certainty-associated emotions increase risk taking compared with uncertainty-associated emotions. To date, this general effect has only been shown in static judgement and decision-making paradigms; therefore, the present study tested the effect of certainty on risk taking in a sequential decision-making task. We hypothesised that the effect would be reversed due to the kind of processing involved, as certainty is considered to encourage heuristic processing that takes into account the emotional cues arising from previous decisions, whereas uncertainty leads to more systematic processing. One hundred and one female participants were induced to feel one of three emotions (film clips) before performing a decision-making task involving risk (Game of Dice Task; Brand et al., 2005). As expected, the angry and happy participants (certainty-associated emotions) were more likely than the fearful participants (uncertainty-associated emotion) to make safe decisions (vs. risky decisions).     

Body image satisfaction among Norwegian adolescents and young adults: a longitudinal study of the influence of interpersonal relationships and BMI

This study used a latent growth curve modeling approach to examine body image satisfaction in 1132 Norwegian adolescent and adult males and females measured at six times between ages 13 and 30. An additional model examined the long term influence of parent-child relationship, peer relationship (both relationships assessed at age 13), and BMI (measured at each interval) to the patterns of change. The results showed a linear growth in body image satisfaction through adolescence followed by a stabilizing of the latent curve in adulthood for both genders. There were gender and developmental variations in the relative contributions of parents and peers for the slope and quadratic growth and in the contribution of BMI to body image satisfaction. When controlling for BMI, initial parent-child relationships and peer relationship predicted the variance in slope growth for males. Parent-child relationship predicted quadratic growth for males. Among females, only initial peer relationships predicted linear growth. No effect was found for quadratic growth. BMI had an additional negative effect on body image satisfaction during adulthood.     

Trait impulsiveness and executive function in healthy young adults

Performance-based neuropsychological tests are often used to assess planning and impulse control, but the extent to which these measures reflect trait impulsiveness or specific dimensions of trait impulsiveness is not clear. This study used the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale-11 (BIS-11; [Patton, J. H., Stanford, M. S., & Barratt, E. S. (1995). Factor structure of the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 51, 768–774.]) to examine the relationship between various dimensions of trait impulsiveness and performance on several executive function tests in healthy young adults. Total BIS-11 scores correlated with performance on measures of planning and impulse control. Higher non-planning impulsiveness scores, which indicate poorer self-control and lower cognitive complexity, correlated most strongly with performance on a maze test that measures planning and impulse control (r = .58). These results provide support for the convergent validity of pencil-and-paper maze-based measures of planning and impulse control.     

Extraordinary moral commitment: young adults involved in social organizations

The personality of exemplary young adults was studied in an effort to paint a portrait of moral excellence that expanded upon the traditional emphasis on moral reasoning maturity. These young adults were nominated based on their extraordinary moral commitment towards various social organizations. The sample included 40 moral exemplars and 40 matched comparison individuals who responded to a battery of questionnaires and participated in a semistructured interview. It was found that moral exemplars, in contrast to comparison individuals, were more agreeable, more advanced in their faith and moral reasoning development, further along in forming an adult identity, and more willing to enter into close relationships. These findings are discussed in the context of describing moral excellence from a multifaceted, personality perspective.     

Incidental regulation of attraction: The neural basis of the derogation of attractive alternatives in romantic relationships

Although a great deal of research addresses the neural basis of deliberate and intentional emotion-regulation strategies, less attention has been paid to the neural mechanisms involved in implicit forms of emotion regulation. Behavioural research suggests that romantically involved participants implicitly derogate the attractiveness of alternative partners, and the present study sought to examine the neural basis of this effect. Romantically committed participants in the present study were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while indicating whether they would consider each of a series of attractive (or unattractive) opposite-sex others as a hypothetical dating partner both while under cognitive load and no cognitive load. Successful derogation of attractive others during the no cognitive load compared to the cognitive load trials corresponded with increased activation in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) and posterior dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (pDMPFC), and decreased activation in the ventral striatum, a pattern similar to those reported in deliberate emotion-regulation studies. Activation in the VLPFC and pDMPFC was not significant in the cognitive load condition, indicating that while the derogation effect may be implicit, it nonetheless requires cognitive resources. Additionally, activation in the right VLPFC correlated with participants' level of relationship investment. These findings suggest that the RVLPFC may play a particularly important role in implicitly regulating the emotions that threaten the stability of a romantic relationship.     

Bereavement,received social support,and anxiety in the elderly: A longitudinal analysis

Abstract

Determinants of anxiety and life satisfaction were examined among the elderly. Study I related the experience of stressful loss events, i.e., the death of a friend or family member, as well as received social support, to anxiety. Support buffered the effects of life events: Only those who received no support after loss were highly anxious. Study II explored determinants of anxiety and life satisfaction over a twelvemonth period. About half of the criterion variance could be explained. Perceived health turned out to be an influential predictor, whereas the role of social support remained ambiguous. The results are discussed in terms of social factors and emotions in the life of the elderly.