Corina Aguilar-Raab- Professor
- Full-Professor at University of Mannheim
Corina Aguilar-Raab
- Professor
- Full-Professor at University of Mannheim
About
94
Publications
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Introduction
Current institution
Publications
Publications (94)
Objective
This research investigates how reflective processes, such as past-temporal and social comparisons, enhance changes in self-concepts of social-emotional traits and whether these effects differ with age.
Method
We conducted two preregistered multi-method studies to examine whether past-temporal or social comparisons predict changes in emot...
Objectives
Social and temporal comparisons are ubiquitous and considered important sources of an individual’s self-knowledge. Yet, comparisons are inherently evaluative and may result in negative affective consequences. In contrast, mindfulness and self-compassion are characterized by a present-moment, non-evaluative, and accepting stance toward th...
Borderline-Persönlichkeitsstörungen (BPS) werden vor dem Hintergrund systemischer Konzepte zu spezifischen Interaktions- und Kommunikationsmustern sowie Formen der Organisation von Ambivalenzen und Antagonismen reflektiert. Herausforderungen für Partner*innen und Familienangehörige und wie das Mehr-Personen-Setting als „Möglichkeitsraum“ für psycho...
While meditation is commonly practiced by individuals on their own, several programmes have incorporated dyadic forms, too. However, the setting – meditating alone or in dyads – and its impact on the effects of meditation have not yet been examined. We expected that dyadic compassion meditation (CM) may improve perceived social closeness more compa...
Background:
Studies have shown that depression and interpersonal relationships are interdependently connected and that including the intimate partner in treatment for depression has beneficial effects. Given evidence that compassion is both an interpersonal quality and a sufficient treatment target, the goal of this study was to examine the effect...
Background:
Affectionate touch, which is vital for mental and physical health, was restricted during the Covid-19 pandemic. This study investigated the association between momentary affectionate touch and subjective well-being, as well as salivary oxytocin and cortisol in everyday life during the pandemic.
Methods:
In the first step, we measured...
Dysregulations of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and sympatho-adrenal medullary (SAM) axis are associated with mental and somatic illness. However, there is lack of knowledge regarding the molecular mechanisms underlying these effects. Epigenetic states in the serotonin transporter gene (SLC6A4) were shown to be associated with stress in...
Self-reported pain levels have been associated with increased stress levels during the COVID-19 pandemic. Less is known about the long-term effects of stress on individuals’ physical and emotional pain levels and their associations with the neuropeptide hormone oxytocin. We aimed to predict momentary pain through individual stress levels and moment...
Some studies suggest a bi-directional association between low relationship quality and depression. However, the social impact of depression and the potential preventative effects of healthy relationships are not yet sufficiently understood, as studies have shown heterogenous results for effects in both directions. Therefore, the main aim of this st...
Loneliness and social isolation have become increasing concerns during COVID-19 lockdown through neuroendocrine stress-reactions, physical and mental health problems. We investigated living situation, relationship status and quality as potential moderators for trait and state loneliness and salivary cortisol levels (hormonal stress-responses) in he...
Background
Intimate social relationships improve individual health and longevity, an effect which is supposed to be mediated through stress-sensitive endocrine and immune mechanisms in response to positive interaction behavior. On a neuroendocrine level, oxytocin (OT) buffers stress responses, modulates social attachment behavior and has been assoc...
Objective: Compassion training seems to be a promising intervention for couples to improve individual psychopathology and relationship quality. Beyond studying the efficacy of training such as Cognitively-Based Compassion Training for Couples (CBCT-fC), it is important to gain insights into the putative mechanisms along the process. Methods: Theore...
Continuing the bond (CB) to a deceased loved one plays a clinically significant role in grief. We validated the Continuing Bonds Scale (CBS) examining externalized CB (illusions and hallucinations) versus internalized CB (use of the deceased as a secure base) in relation to risk factors of complicated grief and bereavement-related adjustment. Data...
Depression occurs in an interpersonal dynamic and living with a depressed person can lead to a significant burden on the partner. Instruments measuring burden do not address couples and often measure caregiving for individuals with schizophrenic disorders. The partner burden in depression (PBD) questionnaire is a new instrument measuring PBD by ask...
Loneliness and social isolation have become increasing concerns during COVID-19 lockdown through neuroendocrine stress-reactions, physical and mental health problems. We investigated living situation, relationship status and quality as potential moderators for trait and state loneliness and salivary cortisol levels (hormonal stress-responses) in he...
When a family member becomes mentally or physically ill, the whole family is affected in a broader sense. So far the focus has been on the care of the sick index patient, although it has been proven that the inclusion of the social context, whether siblings, partners or parents, is not only beneficial for better compliance and better recovery rates...
Zu welchen Anteilen beruht die Depression auf Einschränkungen in der sozialen Interaktionsfähigkeit und in wie weit ist ferner die Beziehungsqualität betroffen? In diesem Beitrag beleuchten wir diese Aspekte, erläutern Ideen zum Einbezug von Kindern in familientherapeutische Settings und gehen auf die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven verschiedener ps...
A large body of literature has shown the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) on stress-reduction. However, little is known about their effects on psychobiological stress-markers in daily life through an ecological momentary assessment approach. Our study examines the effects of MBI on state mindfulness, perceived stress, and indi...
Background
Affectionate touch is important in human social life. Previous research demonstrated that touch is associated with release of endogenous oxytocin and has calming and stress reducing effects. Less is known about the impact of Covid-19-related lockdown on psychobiological outcomes in everyday life. We, thus, focused on the relationship bet...
Background
While previous studies suggested that everyday life fluctuations in situational appraisals (e.g., threat) might not be associated with neuroendocrine stress, the present study investigated whether appraisals of acute stressors in everyday life would be associated with it.
Methods
A total of N = 135 subjects (69 women) participated in a...
Over the past decades, mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to improve individual health and well-being in clinical and nonclinical settings. More recently, secular contemplative trainings were adapted to the couple context as research showed satisfying couple relationships to be one of the strongest predictors of physical and mental hea...
Social-emotional education and the relational competence of school staff and leaders are emphasized in research since they strongly impact childrens’ social, emotional, and cognitive development. In a longitudinal project—Empathie macht Schule (EmS)—we aim at evaluating the outcome and process of an empathy training for the whole school staff, incl...
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11912-021-01063-5
Dieses Kapitel bietet einen Überblick über verschiedene Ansätze zur Messung inter-individueller Unterschiede in der Emotionsregulation. Der Beitrag beginnt mit einer kurzen Einführung in Emotionsregulation als psychologisches Konstrukt und in die Herausforderungen, die sich daraus für die Messung ergeben. In den folgenden Abschnitten stellen wir ve...
Background
Depressive disorders are associated with attentional bias and social anhedonia. There is evidence supporting the hypothesis that depressed individuals participate less in potentially rewarding social situations and exhibit alterations in stress reactivity. With the present study, we aimed at investigating the affective and psychobiologic...
Bereavement is associated with many negative behavioural, psychological and physiological consequences and leads to an increased risk of mortality and morbidity. However, studies specifically examining neuroendocrine mechanisms of grief and bereavement have yet to be reviewed. This systematic review is a synthesis of the latest evidence in this fie...
Introduction
People suffering from depression commonly show impaired emotion regulation, accompanied by deficits in the regulation of psychobiological stress systems. Initial studies indicate that music therapy can impact depressive symptoms and psychobiological mechanisms, and may therefore contribute to effective treatment for depression.
We will...
Objective
Mindfulness‐based interventions are a widely used and highly accepted adjunct treatment in oncology. Due to a paucity of research in advanced cancer and other terminal illnesses, we aimed to evaluate the stress‐reducing effects of a brief, standardised mindfulness intervention for use in palliative care.
Methods
This study was a randomis...
The paper summarises the main contributions to the 9th Symposium on Mindfulness in Education at the University of Vienna in January 2020. The conference was hosted by the project "Mindfulness in Teacher Education and Schools" led by Dr. Karlheinz Valtl.
Mindfulness is an attentional process of being continuously directed towards the present moment-to-moment experience embedded in an accepting and nonjudging attitude. Closely related to this is the concept of compassion. It involves mindfully perceiving the suffering of another combined with the desire to alleviate or protect the other from sufferi...
Der größte Teil der erwachsenen Bevölkerung lebt in einer Partnerschaft. Allein der Aspekt der sozialen Integration erhöht die Wahrscheinlichkeit für psychische und physische Gesundheit und beeinflusst darüber hinaus das individuelle Gesundheitsverhalten. Die reziproke Beeinflussung von Beziehungsqualität und psychischen Störungen werden im Rahmen...
Purpose of review:
This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to synthesize the evidence on the effects of psychosocial interventions on pain in advanced cancer patients.
Recent findings:
The included studies investigated the effects of relaxation techniques, cognitive-behavioral therapy, music therapy, mindfulness- and acceptance-based inte...
Zusammenfassung
In der bisherigen Forschung hat sich Gruppentherapie als ökonomisch und effektiv erwiesen. Es existieren bislang wenige Instrumente, um die Wirkfaktoren des therapeutischen Prozesses in der Gruppentherapie empirisch zu messen. Der Fragebogen zum Erleben von therapeutischen Prozessen in der Gruppe für Therapeutinnen (FEPiG-T) zur Erf...
Partnerschaften sind eng mit psychischer und physischer Gesundheit verknüpft: Einerseits können sie über soziale Unterstützung oder direkt über Berührung einen stresspuffernden Effekt bewirken. Andererseits wirkt sich eine niedrige Beziehungsqualität belastend aus und wird selbst zu einem chronischen Stressor. Hierbei spielen psychoendokrine Substa...
Received: March 19, 2019
Accepted: June 22, 2019
Published online: August 28, 2019
Issue release date: September 2019
Close and intimate relationships are important promoters of health. Oxytocin and its association with social cognition have been investigated in a large number of studies, especially highlighting the neuropeptide’s involvement in attachment behavior and intimate relationships. However, mixed findings on exogenous oxytocin application have led to th...
Family relationships form very important social relationships. They provide the social context enabling the development for a healthy personality and fostering social competencies and the capacity for social adjustment. Several constructs constitute a complex sample of health beneficial attributes, such as resilience, sense of coherence,
self-compa...
Background
Patients with a terminal disease report a high need for psychosocial and spiritual support. Previous literature reviews on psychosocial interventions in palliative care were restricted to certain subtypes of techniques, included a wide range of patients, conditions, and settings, or required a number of sessions unrealistic to be achieve...
The poster describes background, aims and methodological procedures of the proposed MUSED study. The MUSED study targets the evaluation of the evectiveness of music therapy in depressive females from both the psychological and psychobiological perspective.
The Evaluation of Social Systems (EVOS) scale was developed as a measure of the quality of social relationships vis-à-vis context-unspecific aspects of relationship quality. Although constructed for adolescents above the age of 11, it has to date only been validated in adult samples. The current study investigated if EVOS can be applied to adolesce...
Though conceptually distinct, mindfulness and sense of coherence (SOC) are empirically related aspects that promote health and wellbeing. The present research explored uniqueness by investigating criterion validity and incremental validity beyond the Big Five personality traits when predicting psychological distress, life satisfaction, and burnout....
Introduction
Positive social interactions (PSIs) and stable relationships can exert substantial benefits on health. However, patients suffering from depression benefit less from these health-promoting effects. Moreover, relationship quality and even partners’ health has been found to be negatively affected by depressive symptomatology, which may re...
Dynamic rhythmic entrainment, that is the bi-directional synchronization between an internal oscillator and an external musical beat, is frequently used in music therapy to promote psychophysiological relaxation and well-being. However, little is understood about the nature of this mechanism and its link to affective judgments. The objective of thi...
Introduction: Successful regulation of emotional states is positively associated to mental health, while difficulties in regulating emotions are negatively associated to overall mental health and in particular associated with anxiety or depression symptoms. A key structure associated to socio-emotional regulatory processes is the central autonomic...
We examine the sensitivity to change in the Evaluation of Social Systems (EVOS) scale, which assesses relationship quality and collective efficacy. In Study 1 we conducted a waitlist-control, short-term couple therapy RCT study (N = 43 couples) with five systemic therapy sessions treating communication and partnership problems; our intent was to pr...
Credition – the cognitive process of believing – is embedded in a social-interactional framework. As soon as an individual becomes involved in a process of believing, he or she engages in motivational, cognitive, and affective processes based on the contact with and perception
of an object of belief and the “community of believers” or “in-group mem...
Background Vagal activity fluctuates in a pattern of diurnal variation with a maximum in the early morning. The diurnal variation in vagal activity can be expressed using methods of cosine estimation. The circadian variation patterns (CVP) are quantified by three parameters: MESOR – the rhythm adjusted 24h mean; Amplitude – the distance between MES...
Background Vagal activity fluctuates in a pattern of diurnal variation, with a peak during nighttime. We previously demonstrated an association of circadian variation patterns (CVP) and depressive symptoms in predominantly healthy employees. The present analysis aimed to replicate and extend our previous finding by investigating associations betwee...
Zufriedene Paarbeziehungen wirken sich positiv auf die körperliche und die psychische Gesundheit aus. Es wird vermutet, dass dieser Effekt mitunter durch eine psychobiologische Stressreduktion in stabilen Partnerschaften zustande kommt. Gleichzeitig ist noch wenig darüber bekannt, welche spezifischen interpersonellen Aspekte glücklicher Beziehungen...
Sense of coherence (SOC), resilience, dispositional optimism, and self-compassion are highly related aspects of personality that promote health and well-being. We systematically compared these constructs and explored their criterion validity when predicting psychological distress. With the help of structural equation modeling, we examined SOC's fac...
Introduction: Vagal tone fluctuates in a pattern of diurnal variation, with a maximum during nighttime. We previously demonstrated that blunted nighttime increase is associated with unfavorable health outcomes. Depression is known to be associated with decreased vagal tone, but studies investigating the association between circadian variation patte...
Distress tolerance (DT) is associated with psychological health and has been shown to be predicted by mindfulness. Resilience, another protective capacity in the face of stress, is related to positive psychological outcomes, such as preventing development of PTSD. The current longitudinal online-study investigated whether Mindfulness-Based Stress R...
Background:
The Heidelberger Drogenbogen (HDB) is a German language assessment of substance-specific knowledge and consumption patterns of the illicit psychoactive substances cannabis, MDMA (ecstasy), amphetamines, cocaine, and hallucinogens. The behavior modules for each of these five drugs/drug groups allow for a diagnostic evaluation of the ext...
Social interactions have gained increasing importance, both as an outcome and as a possible
mediator in psychotherapy research. Still, there is a lack of adequate measures capturing
relational aspects in multi-person settings. We present a new measure to assess
relevant dimensions of quality of relationships and collective efficacy regarding interp...
We introduce readers to two questionnaires designed for the economic measurement of change following systemic and other psychosocial interventions. Using identical items and scales, but different instructions, they can be equally used for personal systems (couples, families, households etc.) as for organizational systems (work teams, classroom grou...
Background: As a modular inventory, the Heidelberger Drogenbogen (HDB) assesses substance-specific knowledge regarding the illicit psychoactive substances cocaine, amphetamines, cannabis, ecstasy, and hallucinogens. This diagnostic tool allows for assessing the level of substance-specific knowledge in most frameworks of prevention. Objectives: This...
[Therapy-Research II-Symposium, lecture]
[State-of-the-Art-Symposien, Vortrag]
Die Konstruktion des Heidelberger Drogenbogens (HDB) wird vorgestellt. In 10 Modulen werden risikorelevante Wissensinhalte und konkretes Konsumverhalten fur die Substanzgruppen Cannabis, Amphetamine, Ecstasy, Kokain und Halluzinogene erfasst. Das Inventar wurde mittels einer Internetversion an einer Stichprobe von N=2 404 getestet. Auf der Basis st...
Illegaler Drogenkonsum ist ein zunehmend bedeutendes Thema in unserer Gesellschaft und wirft Fragen nach suchtpräventiven Maßnahmen auf, die angemessen und wirksam sind. Dabei spielt es eine wichtige Rolle, psychoaktive Substanzen nicht allein in "legal" und "illegal" zu klassifizieren, sondern sowohl das spezifische Wissen über die jeweilige Subst...
