Social emotions and social cognition in the development of social anxiety disorder

ABSTRACT

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is one of the most prevalent mental disorders with serious individual impairments and societal costs. Little is known about the mechanisms involved in SAD development. Here, I propose that dysregulated social emotions (social fear and shyness) are crucial for SAD development and that these dysregulated social emotions originate in the disturbances in socio-cognitive abilities. The research from our lab confirmed this. It showed that behavioural and physiological indices of social fear contribute to the development of SAD in toddlerhood and early childhood. Later in childhood, between ages 4.5 and 7.5, we found a new risk factor for SAD―dysregulated shyness. Specifically, we found that negative shy expressions and prolonged physiological blushing (temperature increase) contribute to SAD development. Whereas elevated fear may be rooted in deficits in socio-cognitive skills, dysregulated shyness may be rooted in advanced socio-cognitive abilities. These findings imply that dysregulated social emotions play an important role in SAD and should be explicitly targeted in clinical treatments of SAD.     

A Pilot Study of Emotion Regulation Strategies in a Psychodrama Group of Psychiatric Patients

The researcher analyzed two emotion regulation strategies in a group of adults attending psychodrama psychotherapeutic group at an outpatient psychiatric clinic. The subjects, nine men and 15 women between the ages of 19 and 63 (with 14 subjects in young and 10 in middle adulthood) self-assessed their use of reappraisal and suppression using the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire at the beginning of their treatment and at its end. They use reappraisal rarely to sometimes, regardless of their age, gender, and diagnosis. In the first assessment, the participants in middle adulthood and men reported using suppression more than young adults and women. During treatment, middle-aged adults and men succeeded to decrease their use of suppression significantly more than the young adults and women.     

Saying no (to a story): personal identity and negativity

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences - The concept of narrativity and narrative identity has two birth certificates: it is linked to the phenomenological tradition—beginning with...     

Language and the Symptoms of Mental Illness Connection via Abstract Representations of the Self and the World

Abstract

The aim of the present study is to provide additional knowledge about the mediatory processes through which language contributes to the symptoms of mental illness. Although recent studies have provided insight about the relationship between language and the indicators of mental illness, the role of intervening variables in this connection has been ignored. The present investigation tested a structural equation model in which the need for the absolute truth about self and worry mediated the relationship of the gap between inner psychological experience and language with anxiety and depression. The results have provided support for the model and showed that the gap predicts both the need for absolute truth and worry which, in turn, predict the levels of anxiety and depression. The results have been discussed in the light of previous research, and implications for future research have also been considered.     

A Relevant Logic of Questions

Journal of Philosophical Logic - This paper introduces the inquisitive extension of R, denoted as InqR, which is a relevant logic of questions based on the logic R as the background logic of...     

Eternity’s Death in Modernity: A Case of Murder? Of Resurrection?

ABSTRACT

The death of God and the death of eternity stand at the portals of modernity. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which Kojève called the modern counterpart to the Bible, concludes with the death of God. Despite Hegel having shown that everything, even God, has a time nucleus, at the level of ‘Absolute Knowing’, he takes eternity back into play, conceiving it as a structure of time, rather than a realm outside time. Thus, he wrenches a concept of eternity from time itself. Even though Hegel and Nietzsche are philosophical antipodes in many senses, we notice an ambivalent relation in Nietzsche’s works towards eternity as well. Nietzsche, the author of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the other ‘anti-Bible’ of modernity, proclaims eternity to be dead, while at the same time conceiving of an eternal recurrence, that of a dynamic eternity. First, it is argued that for both, eternity is essentially related to action and deed. Second, both highlight the importance of the past in reaching an adequate understanding of time and with it of eternity. Consequently, it is argued that modernity does not offer a vision of the future but a vibrant and often painful consciousness of the past.