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Whether, how, and when social anxiety shapes positive experiences and events: A self-regulatory framework and treatment implications
... According to Kashdan et al. (2011), those classified as individuals with high social anxiety require more self-control than their counterparts in many social encounters, and the demands for self-control will be particularly elevated during stressful or challenging social interactions. In other words, those who were awkward and socially withdrawn ruminated over a lot about potential ostracism in society (Blackhart et al., 2015). ...
... These actions could put more strain on the ability to sustain self-control in the long term. Furthermore, the attenuation of self-control tends to diminish the favorable outcomes and experiences that socially anxious people might encounter in social contexts, aggravating social anxiety symptoms (Kashdan et al., 2011). That is, when people with social anxiety were attempting at regulating their fear and were engaging in behaviors which were intended to prevent social rejection, they failed to divert their attention to the potential benefits of those fruitful social engagements. ...
... That is, when people with social anxiety were attempting at regulating their fear and were engaging in behaviors which were intended to prevent social rejection, they failed to divert their attention to the potential benefits of those fruitful social engagements. Thus, they felt less connected to others and have less positive affect following a satisfying social contact (Kashdan et al., 2011) Such feelings might fuel social anxiety and reinforce it, leading to a vicious spiral of actions. Apart from studies targeting on social anxiety, other researchers observed that individuals with greater degree of fear of negative evaluation also have a higher level of negative affect and a lower level of positive affect (Levinson et al., 2013;Weeks & Howell, 2012;Weeks et al., 2010;Wolniewicz et al., 2018). ...
Previous studies have found a robust positive relationship between trait self-control and life satisfaction mediated by both positive and negative affect, but the simultaneous inclusion of the effect of apprehension of being evaluated by others is less commonly investigated. The present study aimed to examine (1) whether the relationship between self-control and life satisfaction was mediated by positive affect and negative affect in parallel, and (2) whether fear of negative evaluation would moderate the strengths of the mediational pathways. With a sample of two hundred fifty university students in Hong Kong, mediational analysis (ME) revealed that both positive affect and negative affect were the mediators between self-control and life satisfaction. Subsequent moderated mediation analysis (moME) supported the moderating role of fear of negative evaluation on the mediational pathway through positive affect, but not on the pathway through negative affect. In particular, higher scores on fear of negative evaluation would attenuate the strength of association between self-control and positive affect. Therefore, to optimize university students’ well-being and mental health functioning, treatment modalities should target both behavioral (i.e., self-control) and socio-emotional (i.e., apprehension of being evaluated critically from others) aspects.
... Much of the focus within the literature on interpretation bias has been on negative interpretation bias of negative, ambiguous, or neutral social events. However, social anxiety is associated with fear of evaluation in and avoidance of social situations regardless of valence (Kashdan et al., 2011). Interpretation of positive social events (e.g., a friendly social event, doing well in a presentation) is an under-researched area among socially anxious individuals. ...
... A variety of 'positivity deficits' have been found among socially anxious individuals, including diminished positive affect (Goodman et al., 2018;Kashdan et al., 2011;Richey et al., 2019;Taylor et al., 2010). Positive emotions such as joy and gratitude, in turn, are associated with increased well-being (Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002;Livingstone & Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. ...
... Thus, it was not possible to examine the association between changes in IU and decreases in negative interpretations of positive social events over treatment. Multiple positivity deficits have been identified amongst individuals with SAD (e.g., Kashdan et al., 2011), yet, this study only included a single measure of negative interpretations. The current study represents the first study examining pre-post treatment changes in negative interpretations of positive social events and therefore, given its preliminary nature, did not include other measures of negatively biased judgments. ...
Background
Individuals with social anxiety disorder (SAD) report interpreting social events negatively regardless of valence. Fear of causing discomfort to others and intolerance of uncertainty (IU) are associated with negative interpretations of positive social situations. However, no studies have examined whether these negative interpretations change over CBT for SAD, nor predictors of such changes. This study examined if: negative interpretations of positive social events improve during CBT for SAD; these negative interpretations correlate with social anxiety symptom severity, fear of causing discomfort to others, and IU at the start of treatment; and fear of causing discomfort to others, IU and its subfactors at the start of treatment predict changes in these negative interpretations over treatment.
Methods
Eighty-five treatment-seeking DSM diagnosed individuals with primary SAD completed measures of the tendency to interpret positive events negatively pre-post CBT, and IU and fears of causing discomfort to others at pre-treatment.
Results
Results demonstrated significant pre-post decreases after CBT for SAD in negative interpretations of positive social events. All measures were significantly correlated with each other. None of the pre-treatment variables significantly predicted decreases in negative interpretations of positive social events over treatment.
Conclusions
CBT may be effective in reducing these negative interpretations.
... In contrast to the plethora of studies on negative autobiographical memories and social anxiety, research on positive memories and positive self-schemas is relatively limited. There is evidence that socially anxious individuals tend to experience positivity deficits (Kashdan et al., 2011), where positive social events are perceived more negatively (Alden et al., 2008), positive social memories are less accessible (Moscovitch et al., 2011), and positive information is less readily incorporated into self-views (Koban et al., 2017). However, no prior studies have investigated the effects of social anxiety and self-schemas on the retrieval and appraisal of positive social autobiographical memories and how these effects might compare to those of negative social autobiographical memories. ...
... This finding aligns with past research on positivity bias in the general population showing that positive social feedback is incorporated into self-views to a greater extent than negative social feedback (Korn et al., 2012;Sharot et al., 2011;Taylor & Brown, 1988). The healthy bias contrasts with socially anxious individuals' tendency to magnify their perception of the influence of negative social experiences (e.g., Moscovitch et al., 2011Moscovitch, Waechter, et al., 2015;Moscovitch et al., 2018) and extract less positivity from social interactions (Clark & Wells, 1995;Glazier & Alden, 2019;Kashdan et al., 2011;Koban et al., 2017). Accordingly, in this study and in support of our hypotheses, individuals with higher SA (and more negative self-schemas) tended to rate their negative social memories, but not their positive social memories, as more impactful on their views of themselves, others and the world. ...
Objective
Social anxiety is characterized by maladaptive self‐schemas about being socially undesirable. Self‐schemas are deeply held beliefs which are derived from negative autobiographical memories of painful social experiences. In contrast to the plethora of past research on negative memories in social anxiety, almost no research has investigated objectively positive social autobiographical memories. In this preregistered study, we examined the effects of social anxiety and self‐schemas on the appraised impact and meaningfulness of retrieved positive versus negative social autobiographical memories.
Method
Participants recruited via Prolific (final n = 343) were randomized to one of two conditions in which they were instructed to retrieve, orally narrate, and appraise a positive or negative social autobiographical memory of a specific experience from their personal past where they felt either valued or unvalued, respectively.
Results
Results demonstrated that participants rated their positive memories as more impactful and meaningful than negative memories overall, but this effect was reversed for participants who endorsed having either stronger negative self‐schemas or greater social anxiety symptoms, for whom negative memories were more impactful. Additionally, participants who endorsed having stronger positive self‐schemas rated their negative memories as significantly less impactful and their positive memories as nearly more impactful.
Conclusion
Together, these results elucidate how self‐schemas and social anxiety are related to autobiographical memory appraisals, paving the way for future research on memory‐based therapeutic interventions for social anxiety disorder.
... Past understandings of impression management were often based on the need to deceive others or meet social expectations, but research has confirmed that impression management in social interactions is not for deception but rather self-control oriented towards interpersonal relationships (Uziel, 2010(Uziel, , 2014. Previous studies have shown that individuals with high levels of social anxiety tend to have stronger self-control abilities during interactions with others (Kashdan et al., 2011). When self-control weakens during or after social interactions, it is positively correlated with social anxiety (Kashdan et al., 2011;BlaCkhart et al., 2015). ...
... Previous studies have shown that individuals with high levels of social anxiety tend to have stronger self-control abilities during interactions with others (Kashdan et al., 2011). When self-control weakens during or after social interactions, it is positively correlated with social anxiety (Kashdan et al., 2011;BlaCkhart et al., 2015). If individual selfcontrol is for the sake of impression management, it will bring additional burdens to social anxiety (Finkel et al., 2006;BlaCkhart et al., 2015). ...
Introduction
As the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) gains popularity among Chinese young people, it has undergone a gradual transition from being perceived as a personality assessment tool to being regarded as a social label. The objective of this study was to ascertain whether the use of the MBTI as a social label has an impact on social anxiety among Chinese youth groups.
Methods
A questionnaire survey was conducted on social media platforms to recruit Chinese youth aged 18 to 35. A total of 247 males and 222 females participated in the study, and the data was analyzed quantitatively using SPSS software and the Process macro plugin.
Results
The study found no strong correlation between MBTI as a social label and social anxiety. Moreover, this study introduced ego identity, belonging, and impression management as mediating variables and found that, under the influence of ego identity and impression management, the use of MBTI has a significant impact on social anxiety.
Discussion
The research reveals the complex role of MBTI among Chinese youth and provides a new perspective for understanding the impact of online social labels on the mental health of youth groups. Of course, this study also has limitations in terms of sample size and variable control. Future research should expand the sample size, introduce more potential influencing factors, and further validate and expand the existing conclusions.
... Furthermore, appetitive responding seems to be reduced in anxiety, as well as depressive disorder [19]. Impairments regarding the experience of positive affect have especially been observed in social anxiety disorder [20,21]. Patients with social phobia display a neural hyposensitivity during reward anticipation compared to healthy controls [22,23]. ...
... In turn, reduced reward sensitivity, especially during socially rewarding experiences, could amplify symptoms [66]. Decreased positive experiences in social phobia [20,67] and emerging social anhedonia [68] can be consequences. ...
Background
Reward sensitivity constitutes a potential key mechanism regarding the etiology and maintenance of mental disorders, especially depression. However, due to a lack of longitudinal studies, the temporal dynamics are not clear yet. Although some evidence indicates that reward processing could be a transdiagnostic mechanism of disorders, these observations could be also a product of comorbidity with depression. This study aimed at investigating the temporal dynamics of reward sensitivity and the course of psychopathological symptoms in a longitudinal investigation, while taking a possible mediating role of depression into account.
Methods
We conducted a three-wave longitudinal online survey with a 4-week interval. A total of N = 453 participants filled out all three questionnaires. Reward sensitivity was assessed with the Positive Valence System Scale-21 (PVSS-21), depression with the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), eating disorder symptoms with the Eating Disorder Examination-Questionnaire-8 (EDE-Q-8), social anxiety with the Mini-social phobia inventory (Mini-SPIN) and alcohol consumption with the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test-Consumption (AUDIT-C). Cross-lagged panels and mediation analyses were calculated using path analyses.
Results
Depressive and eating disorder symptoms predicted reward insensitivity at later points in time. Effects were larger from T2 to T3. A bidirectional relationship concerning social anxiety was found. Higher alcohol consumption predicted higher reward sensitivity. Depression at T2 fully mediated the association between psychopathological symptoms at T1 and reward sensitivity at T3 for social anxiety and eating disorder symptoms.
Conclusions
Our findings imply that reduced reward sensitivity seems to be a consequence rather than an antecedent of psychopathological symptoms. Comorbid depression plays a crucial role in other mental disorders regarding observed hyposensitivity towards rewards. Therefore, our results do not support a transdiagnostic notion of reward sensitivity, but they indicate a potential role of reward sensitivity for symptom persistence.
Trial registration
The study was preregistered at the Open Science Framework (OSF) (https://archive.org/details/osf-registrations-6n3s8-v1; registration DOI https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/6N3S8).
... Therefore, individuals need to expend resources of selfcontrol to overcome these bad feelings. Kashdan et al. (2011) found individuals with high social anxiety exert more effort to self-regulate during social activities than those with low. Blackhart et al. (2015) found for socially anxious people, simply communicating with others would deplete self-control resources, leading to reducing the effect of subsequent self-regulation. ...
... Additionally, this research discovered that social anxiety and selfcontrol act as a chain mediator between parental phubbing and adolescents' academic burnout. The result of this study further supports the findings that social anxiety leads to reduced self-control (Kashdan et al., 2011;Blackhart et al., 2015). Parental phubbing can make adolescents have negative expectations about interpersonal interactions and then trigger social anxiety (Zhang et al., 2022). ...
Based on the limited resource model of self-control, we construct a chain mediation model to examine the relationship between parental phubbing and adolescents’ academic burnout, and whether social anxiety and self-control play a mediating role in it. We used 4 questionnaires to investigate parental phubbing, social anxiety, self-control, and adolescents’ academic burnout among 828 high school students in Wuhu and Huangshan City, Anhui Province, China. The findings indicated that: (1) parental phubbing, social anxiety, and self-control all significantly predict adolescents’ academic burnout directly and (2) parental phubbing could indirectly influence adolescents’ academic burnout through three pathways: the separate mediating effect of social anxiety and self-control, and the chain mediating effect on both. The results of this study help parents understand how their phubbing actions affect adolescents’ academic burnout and the mechanism of action.
... People with SAD also report a limited repertoire of strategies beyond those that are avoidant (Rusch et al., 2012). Taken together, people with SAD devote considerable effort to managing their emotions through primarily avoidance-oriented strategies (Kashdan et al., 2011) and persistent avoidance is core to the pathology (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). ...
... As such, lower ER diversity may be associated with higher (vs. lower) social anxiety severity, given that SAD is characterized by rigid, overreliance on avoidance-oriented strategies (Kashdan et al., 2011). ...
Emotion regulation (ER) diversity, defined as the variety, frequency, and evenness of ER strategies used, may predict social anxiety severity. In a sample of individuals with high ( n = 113) and low ( n = 42) social anxiety severity, we tested whether four trait ER diversity metrics predicted group membership. We generalized existing trait ER diversity calculations to repeated measures data to test whether state-level metrics (using 2 weeks of ecological momentary assessment [EMA] data) predicted social anxiety severity within the higher severity group. As hypothesized, higher trait ER diversity within avoidance-oriented strategies predicted greater likelihood of belonging to the higher severity group. At the state level, higher diversity across all ER strategies, and within and between avoidance- and approach-oriented strategies, predicted higher social anxiety severity (but only after analyses controlled for number of submitted EMAs). Only diversity within avoidance-oriented strategies was significantly correlated across trait and state levels. Findings suggest that high avoidance-oriented ER diversity may co-occur with higher social anxiety severity.
... Regarding anhedonia, CBT has been shown to improve subjective anhedonia in individuals with depression (Alsayednasser et al., 2022;Hanuka et al., 2022). We are not aware of a study that examined anhedonia following CBT in SAD even though anhedonia is also observed in SAD and other anxiety disorders (Brown et al., 1998;Kashdan, 2007;Kashdan et al., 2011). Since anhedonia is expected to cut across diagnostic boundaries, we would expect CBT to improve anhedonia regardless of principal diagnosis. ...
... Therefore, it was not possible to verify that participants with SAD or MDD experienced anhedonia. As previous work indicates anhedonia is transdiagostic (Brown et al., 1998;Kashdan, 2007;Kashdan et al., 2011;Pizzagalli, 2014), we expected SAD and MDD groups would not differ in capacity for pleasure, which can be parsed into anticipatory (e.g., prediction of pleasure from future reward) and consummatory (e.g., experience of pleasure in the moment) components (Berridge & Robinson, 2003;Gard et al., 2006). Since RewP represents consummatory pleasure (i.e., response to feedback), only self-reported consummatory pleasure was used to examine an association with RewP. ...
Suicidality is prevalent in Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). Limited data indicate the reward positivity (RewP), a neurophysiological index of reward responsivity, and subjective capacity for pleasure may serve as brain and behavioral assays for suicide risk though this has yet to be examined in SAD or MDD in the context of psychotherapy. Therefore, the current study tested whether suicidal ideation (SI) relates to RewP and subjective capacity for anticipatory and consummatory pleasure at baseline and whether Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) impacts these measures. Participants with SAD (n=55) or MDD (n=54) completed a monetary reward task (gains vs. losses) during electroencephalogram (EEG) before being randomized to CBT or supportive therapy (ST), a comparator common factors arm. EEG and SI data were collected at baseline, mid-treatment, and post-treatment; capacity for pleasure was collected at baseline and post-treatment. Baseline results showed participants with SAD or MDD were comparable in SI, RewP, and capacity for pleasure. When controlling for symptom severity, SI negatively corresponded with RewP following gains and SI positively corresponded with RewP following losses at baseline. Yet, SI did not relate to subjective capacity for pleasure. Evidence of a distinct SI-RewP association suggests RewP may serve as a transdiagnositic brain-based marker of SI. Treatment outcome revealed that among participants with SI at baseline, SI significantly decreased regardless of treatment arm; also, consummatory, but not anticipatory, pleasure increased across participants regardless of treatment arm. RewP was stable following treatment, which has been reported in other clinical trial studies.
... Anhedonia is a transdiagnostic symptom, in that it extends beyond major depression to social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety disorder (Kashdan et al., 2011), as well as schizophrenia (Watson and Naragon-Gainey 2010) and substance abuse (Thomsen et al., 2015). ...
Le lesioni cerebrali acquisite (LCA), che comprendono traumi cranici (TBI) e ictus, comportano una rosa di conseguenze emotive che possono incidere profondamente sul funzionamento sociale e sulla qualità della vita dei pazienti. Questa revisione narrativa vuole riassumere le conseguenze emotive più di frequente associate alle LCA, tra cui ansia, depressione, apatia, anedonia, disinibizione, aggressività e deficit nella teoria della mente. La depressione è caratterizzata da pervasivi sentimenti negativi soggettivi e da una sofferenza emotiva, spesso accompagnata da una riduzione della motivazione e da una tendenza al ritiro dalle attività quotidiane. Al contrario, l'ansia può comportare una maggiore sensibilità agli stimoli interni ed esterni, che porta ad una persistente sensazione di tensione e attivazione fisiologica, che può anch'essa influire sulla motivazione. Sebbene apatia e anedonia possano sovrapporsi in parte con cambiamenti della motivazione, sono concetti distinti: l'apatia è definita da indifferenza emotiva e distacco affettivo, mentre l'anedonia si riferisce ad una capacità ridotta di provare piacere o interesse per attività precedentemente gratificanti. La disregolazione emotiva, come l'aumento dell'irritabilità, l'aggressività e i comportamenti impulsivi, può contribuire all'isolamento sociale. La disinibizione può manifestarsi attraverso comportamenti sociali inappropriati, complicando la reintegrazione sociale dei pazienti. Infine, i deficit nella teoria della mente, ovvero nella capacità di comprendere le emozioni e le prospettive altrui, possono ostacolare le interazioni e le relazioni sociali. Questa revisione narrativa della letteratura vuole evidenziare la natura pervasiva e multifattoriale delle conseguenze emotive risultanti dalle LCA. Tali disturbi sono spesso persistenti e complessi, si vuole quindi sottolineare la necessità di una maggiore attenzione e dell'implementazione di programmi di riabilitazione personalizzati per migliorare la qualità della vita dei pazienti. Parole chiave Lesione Cerebrale Acquisita; Conseguenze; Ictus; Trauma Cranico; Revisione Autore responsabile per la corrispondenza: Abstract Acquired brain injuries (ABIs), including traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) and strokes, frequently result in a wide range of emotional sequelae that profoundly impact patients' quality of life and social functioning. This narrative review examines the emotional consequences that often follow ABIs, including anxiety, depression, apathy, anhedonia, disinhibition, aggression, and deficits in theory of mind. Depression is mainly characterized by pervasive negative subjective feelings and emotional suffering, frequently accompanied by reduced motivation and a tendency to withdraw from daily activities. In contrast, anxiety involves heightened sensitivity to internal and external stimuli, leading to a persistent sense of tension and physiological arousal, which can also affect motivation. While apathy and anhedonia may share some overlap with motivational changes, they are distinct constructs: apathy is defined by emotional indifference and affective detachment, while anhedonia specifically refers to a diminished ability to experience pleasure or interest in previously enjoyable activities. Emotional dysregulation, such as increased irritability, aggression, and impulsive behavior, contributes to interpersonal conflicts and social isolation. Disinhibition can manifest as inappropriate social behaviors, further complicating social reintegration. Additionally, deficits in theory of mind, or the ability to understand others' emotions and perspectives, impair social interactions and relationships. This narrative review aims to highlight the pervasive and multifactored nature of emotional consequences following ABI. These emotional disturbances are often persistent and challenging, underlying the need for increased awareness and tailored rehabilitation programs, to enhance patients' quality of life.
... However, we found only the conceptual rescripting condition reduced appraisals of the likelihood of the negative social event recurring, with no differences between the conceptual and perceptual conditions on any of the other event appraisal scales (vividness, emotion, importance). Practically, this suggests conceptual rescripting could also be an effective tool to reduce the tendency of people with social anxiety to fixate and ruminate on negative anticipated outcomes of future events (Joormann & Gotlib, 2010), which inhibits them from entering and enjoying social experiences (Kashdan et al., 2011). Theoretically, questions remain open about this effect, specifically whether conceptual rescripting prompted participants to reconsider their expectations about future events associated with the original memory, reducing the estimate or imagining the positive outcome enhancing the estimate of this alternate outcome, and as a result, impacting that of the original memory. ...
Negative self-schemas are fundamental to social anxiety disorder and contribute to its persistence, thus understanding how to change schemas is of critical importance. Memory-based interventions and associated theories propose that reconstructing autobiographical memories tethered to schemas with conceptual details that challenge the associated expectations will lead to schema change. Here, we test this proposal in a between-subjects behavioural experiment with undergraduate participants with social anxiety. All participants were asked to recall aversive social memories, evaluated these memories on a series of scales, including estimates of reoccurrence, and provided ratings of negative and positive schema beliefs. Next, half the participants reconstructed (rescripted) these aversive memories with conceptual details that challenged the active schema (conceptual condition) and the other half reconstructed the memories with additional experiential details (perceptual condition). All participants provided again evaluations of the original memory and their schema beliefs. Our analysis revealed that the conceptual condition led to significant reductions in negative self-schemas, increases in positive self-schemas, and decreases in estimates of future negative event reoccurrence. Thus, effective schema-change, both a weakening of negative schemas and a strengthening of more positive, adaptive schemas, is dependent on altering the underlying meaning of associated autobiographical memories.
... Aberrant processing of positive information is associated with diminished positive experiences in social anxiety. Compared to NA individuals, SA individuals tend to experience fewer positive emotions (Kashdan et al., 2011). ...
Anxiety can impair the central executive functioning in working memory (WM). Further, the adverse effect of anxiety on the central executive would be greater when threat-related distractors are present. This study investigated the effect of task-irrelevant emotional faces on WM updating in social anxiety. Forty-one socially anxious (SA) and thirty-nine non-anxious (NA) participants completed an emotional face interference n-back task coupled with eye movement recording. The results showed that, in the 2-back task, SA participants had longer reaction times in the angry-neutral and neutral-neutral interference conditions than in the no-interference condition, whereas NA participants had longer reaction times in the happy-neutral and neutral-neutral interference conditions than in the no-interference condition. In addition, SA participants initially fixated on angry faces more frequently and spent more time looking at them, whereas NA participants initially fixated on happy faces more frequently and spent more time looking at them. This study suggests that attentional bias towards social threats reduces the efficiency rather than effectiveness of WM updating in social anxiety. Moreover, SA individuals are better at resisting interference from task-irrelevant positive stimuli, while NA individuals are better at resisting interference from task-irrelevant threatening stimuli.
... We found that individuals with an edge from social acceptance to positive affect had, on average, lower self-reported social anxiety than those who did not have this edge. This is consistent with prior work suggesting that social anxiety disorder is associated with avoidance of social stimuli (Gunther et al., 2021;Rinck et al., 2010) as well as less rewarding social interactions (Kashdan et al., 2011) and supports the idea that as social anxiety increases, social acceptance and positive affect are less tightly coupled, and the benefits of social acceptance are diminished. ...
Social acceptance and rejection are salient experiences, especially during adolescence. Acceptance and rejection relate to changes in positive and negative affect, although directionality of the relation remains unclear. The ability to regulate affect following social experiences may be part of the etiology of social anxiety disorder. With the importance of social cues in adolescence, as well as adolescence as a key window for the onset of social anxiety, we used daily diary data collected in a sample ranging from 9 to 18 years to examine daily changes in acceptance, rejection, positive affect, and negative affect. Taking a person-centered approach, we constructed networks directionally linking social experiences and affect, which served as behaviors of interest (“nodes”) in the network for each individual. From these networks, we extracted recovery times from different nodes, that is, the number of days it took for a node to return to baseline when (a) the node itself was perturbed and (b) when a connected node was perturbed. We examined associations between network metrics and social anxiety, age, gender, and their interaction. We found that the recovery time of positive affect when social acceptance was perturbed was inversely related with social anxiety and age, suggesting benefits of acceptance may be shorter lasting for those with more (vs. less) social anxiety symptoms and for older (vs. younger) adolescents. We conclude that positive affect may be a critical yet understudied piece in understanding why adolescence is a developmental period of increased risk for psychopathology and for understanding the etiology of social anxiety disorder.
... In this sense, the results of the study by BlaCkhart et al. (2015) on university students suggest that low levels of self-control are a significant risk factor for a wide range of individual and interpersonal difficulties, with lower levels of self-control, namely explosive tempers, being associated with higher levels of social anxiety. The literature suggests that low levels of self-control can contribute to the exacerbation of social anxiety symptoms, thus highlighting the idea that self-control can play a relevant role in controlling anxiety, helping people to feel better, even in the specific situations that most frighten them (BlaCkhart et al. 2015;Kashdan et al. 2011). The present study is innovative, given the scarcity of national and international scientific research that reports the importance of peer attachment in the development of social anxiety in the context of adaptation to university. ...
Peers emerge as emotionally present figures in the lives of young adults, capable of protecting them from the challenges that can cause the development of social anxiety. In the context of anxiety, self-control highlights a relevant potential, which is positively correlated with mental health and academic path. The present study aims to understand the role of peer attachment and self-control in the development of social anxiety in young adults in the university context. The sample comprised 407 young adults aged between 18 and 25 (M = 20.90; SD = 2.32). Self-report instruments were used: the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment (IPPA), the Scale of Anxiety and Avoidance in Performance and Social Interaction Situations (EAESDIS) and the Low Self-Control Scale. This study concludes that alienation from peers plays a positive role in anxiety and avoidance, as does short temper, with risk-taking and egocentricity negatively predicting social anxiety. The results are discussed, considering the importance of peer relationships in young university students’ adaptive processes and mental health.
... This is consistent with previous studies showing that there is no interaction between positive emotion regulation efficacy and problem behaviors and negative emotions. 43,66,67 The reason is that regulatory emotional self-efficacy produces positive or negative functions, which are usually directly related to individual psychology and behavior. 43 In other words, positive psychology and behavior directly interact with self-efficacy in expressing positive emotions. ...
Purpose
The detrimental effects of social anxiety on college students require urgent mitigation. To explore the influencing factors and underlying mechanisms of social anxiety among college students, this study aims to examine the relationship between negative physical self and social anxiety, and the mediating effects of fear of negative evaluation and regulatory emotional self-efficacy.
Methods
The Negative Physical Self Scale, Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale, and Interaction Anxiousness Scale were administered to 924 Chinese college students. SPSS 26.0 was used for analysis, and the Bootstrap method was used to test the significance level of the mediating effect.
Results
Negative physical self was significantly and positively related to social anxiety in college students. Fear of negative evaluation and regulatory negative emotional self-efficacy played independent mediating roles between negative physical self and social anxiety. Fear of negative evaluation and regulatory negative emotional self-efficacy showed a bidirectional chain mediating effect between negative physical self and social anxiety.
Conclusion
This study elucidates the mechanistic pathways between negative physical self and social anxiety. The relationship between negative physical self and social anxiety is influenced by the mediating effects of fear of negative evaluation, regulatory negative emotional self-efficacy, and the bidirectional chain mediating effect of fear of negative evaluation and regulatory negative emotional self-efficacy. This finding provides a reference for policy makers and educators to develop interventions for social anxiety in college students.
... Although few studies directly support a sequential mediation effect of social anxiety and procrastination, we can still capture some clues from existing research. Theoretically, people with social anxiety are afraid of interacting with other people because it may lead to negative evaluation and rejection (Hofmann, 2007), and they would perform safety behaviors to protect themselves (Clark & Wells, 1995;Kashdan et al., 2011). Based on the common characteristic of fear of being judged by others, it is reasonable to speculate that social anxiety has an influence on procrastination. ...
Although low self-control is regarded as an important influence factor of college student smartphone addiction, the mediating mechanism is still unclear. Based on the I–PACE model, the present study aims to explore the multiple mediating roles of social anxiety and procrastination in the effect of self-control on smartphone addiction among college students, as well as the gender differences, using a semi-longitudinal design. Our sample consisted of 1143 Chinese college students (36.4% males; Mage=21.91 years, SD = 1.02 years, range from 19 to 28 years) who completed the Brief Self-control Scale, the Interaction Anxiousness Scale, the Pure Pocrastination Scale, and the Smartphone Addiction Scale-Short Version. SPSS 26.0 was used to analyze correlations among variables and Mplus 8.0 was used to test the structural equation model and gender differences. The results indicated that self-control was negatively associated with smartphone addiction. Social anxiety and procrastination sequentially mediated the link between self-control and smartphone addiction. Furthermore, although the proposed mediation model did not show significant gender differences, we found different associations between self-control, procrastination and smartphone addiction between males and females. The results of this study may contribute to intervention and prevention programs to reduce smartphone addiction among students.
... We found that individuals with an edge from social acceptance to positive affect had, on average, lower self-reported social anxiety than those who did not have this edge. This is consistent with prior work suggesting that social anxiety disorder is associated with avoidance of social stimuli (Gunther et al., 2021;Rink et al., 2010) as well as less rewarding social interactions (Kashdan et al., 2011) and supports the idea that as social anxiety increases, social acceptance and positive affect are less tightly coupled, and the benefits of social acceptance are diminished. ...
Social acceptance and rejection are salient experiences, especially during adolescence. Acceptance and rejection relate to changes in positive and negative affect, although directionality of the relation remains unclear. The ability to regulate affect following social experiences may be part of the etiology of social anxiety disorder. With the importance of social cues in adolescence, as well as adolescence as a key window for the onset of social anxiety, we used daily diary data collected in a sample ranging from 9-18 years to examine daily changes in acceptance, rejection, positive affect, and negative affect. Taking a person-centered approach, we constructed networks directionally linking social experiences and affect, which served as behaviors of interest (“nodes”) in the network, for each individual. From these networks, we extracted recovery times from different nodes, i.e., the number of days it took for a node to return to baseline when 1) the node itself was perturbed and 2) when a connected node was perturbed. We examined associations between network metrics and social anxiety, age, gender, and their interaction. We found that the recovery time of positive affect when social acceptance was perturbed was inversely related with social anxiety and age, suggesting benefits of acceptance may be shorter-lasting for those with more (vs. less) social anxiety symptoms and for older (vs. younger) adolescents. We conclude that positive affect may be a critical yet understudied piece in understanding why adolescence is a developmental period of increased risk for psychopathology and for understanding the etiology of social anxiety disorder.
... For example, effect sizes for cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between positive affect and anxiety are on par with effect sizes for positive affect and depression (Khazanov & Ruscio, 2016;Kotov et al., 2010). Furthermore, hedonic impairments have been observed in social anxiety disorder (Kashdan et al., 2011), posttraumatic stress disorder (Hopper et al., 2008;Litz et al., 2000), and generalized anxiety disorder (Srivastava et al., 2003), including in youth samples (Morris et al., 2015), and reduced positive affect on stressful days was prospectively related to anxiety disorders 7 years later (Rackoff & Newman, 2020). Thus, treatments designed to increase positive affect are relevant not only for depressed but also for anxious individuals. ...
Objective: Positive and negative affect play critical roles in depression and anxiety treatment, but the dynamic processes of how affect changes over treatment in relation to changes in symptoms is unclear. The study goal was to examine relationships among changes in positive and negative affect with changes in depression and anxiety symptoms. Method: This secondary analysis used a combined sample (N = 196) of two trials (Craske et al., 2019, 2023) comparing positive affect treatment (PAT) to negative affect treatment. Longitudinal cross-lag panel models explored whether changes in positive and negative affect (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule; Watson et al., 1988) predicted subsequent changes in depression and anxiety symptoms (Depression Anxiety Stress Scales; Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995), whether symptoms predicted subsequent changes in affect, and whether treatment condition moderated these relationships. Results: Increases in positive affect predicted subsequent decreases in depression and anxiety symptoms, regardless of treatment condition. Symptoms did not reciprocally predict changes in positive affect. For individuals in PAT, decreases in negative affect predicted subsequent decreases in symptoms. Moreover, decreases in symptoms predicted subsequent decreases in negative affect, regardless of treatment condition. Conclusions: Results did not support a reciprocal relationship between positive affect and symptoms of depression and anxiety since positive affect predicted depression and anxiety symptoms but not vice versa. Results supported a reciprocal relationship between negative affect and symptoms of depression and anxiety since negative affect predicted depression and anxiety symptoms in PAT, and depression and anxiety symptoms predicted negative affect in both treatment conditions.
... Depression is characterized by dysfunctional reward processing (Admon & Pizzagalli, 2015;Halahakoon et al., 2020) and low reward sensitivity (Alloy, Olino, Freed, & Nusslock, 2016;Katz, Matanky, Aviram, & Yovel, 2020;Keren et al., 2018). In addition, reward insensitivity has often been discussed as a transdiagnostic factor (Alloy et al., 2016), not only applying to depression but also to various other mental disorders, such as social anxiety (e.g., Kashdan, Weeks, & Savostyanova, 2011), eating disorders (e.g., Harrison, O'Brien, Lopez, & Treasure, 2010), or posttraumatic stress disorder (e.g., Hopper et al., 2008). Reward processing potentially plays a key role regarding the maintenance of psychopathology (Alloy et al., 2016). ...
... Indeed, individuals with SAD often rate themselves, their character, and their appearance more negatively than non-anxious individuals [5,6]. SAD is also associated with low self-esteem and self-compassion [7,8], low positive affect [9], and high self-criticism [10,11]. ...
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterized by an excessive fear of social evaluation and a persistently negative view of the self. Here we test the hypothesis that negative biases in brain responses and in social learning of self-related information contribute to the negative self-image and low self-esteem characteristic of SAD. Adult participants diagnosed with social anxiety (N = 21) and matched controls (N = 23) rated their performance and received social feedback following a stressful public speaking task. We investigated how positive versus negative social feedback altered self-evaluation and state self-esteem and used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to characterize brain responses to positive versus negative feedback. Compared to controls, participants with SAD updated their self-evaluation and state self-esteem significantly more based on negative compared to positive social feedback. Responses in the frontoparietal network correlated with and mirrored these behavioral effects, with greater responses to positive than negative feedback in non-anxious controls but not in participants with SAD. Responses to social feedback in the anterior insula and other areas mediated the effects of negative versus positive feedback on changes in self-evaluation. In non-anxious participants, frontoparietal brain areas may contribute to a positive social learning bias. In SAD, frontoparietal areas are less recruited overall and less attuned to positive feedback, possibly reflecting differences in attention allocation and cognitive regulation. More negatively biased brain responses and social learning could contribute to maintaining a negative self-image in SAD and other internalizing disorders, thereby offering important new targets for interventions.
... For example, effect sizes for cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between positive affect and anxiety are on par with effect sizes for positive affect and depression (Khazanov & Ruscio, 2016;Kotov et al., 2010). Furthermore, hedonic impairments have been observed in social anxiety disorder (Kashdan et al., 2011), posttraumatic stress disorder (Hopper et al., 2008;Litz et al., 2000), and generalized anxiety disorder (Srivastava et al., 2003), including in youth samples (Morris et al., 2015), and reduced positive affect on stressful days was prospectively related to anxiety disorders 7 years later (Rackoff & Newman, 2020). Thus, treatments designed to increase positive affect are relevant not only for depressed but also for anxious individuals. ...
Objective:
Determine whether a novel psychosocial treatment for positive affect improves clinical status and reward sensitivity more than a form of cognitive behavioral therapy that targets negative affect and whether improvements in reward sensitivity correlate with improvements in clinical status.
Method:
In this assessor-blinded, parallel-group, multisite, two-arm randomized controlled clinical superiority trial, 85 treatment-seeking adults with severely low positive affect, moderate-to-severe depression or anxiety, and functional impairment received 15 weekly individual therapy sessions of positive affect treatment (PAT) or negative affect treatment (NAT). Clinical status measures were self-reported positive affect, interviewer-rated anhedonia, and self-reported depression and anxiety. Target measures were eleven physiological, behavioral, cognitive, and self-report measures of reward anticipation-motivation, response to reward attainment, and reward learning. All analyses were intent-to-treat.
Results:
Compared to NAT, individuals receiving PAT achieved superior improvements in the multivariate clinical status measures at posttreatment, b = .37, 95% CI [.15, .59], t(109) = 3.34, p = .001, q = .004, d = .64. Compared to NAT, individuals receiving PAT also achieved higher multivariate reward anticipation-motivation, b = .21, 95% CI [.05, .37], t(268) = 2.61, p = .010, q = .020, d = .32, and higher multivariate response to reward attainment, b = .24, 95% CI [.02, .45], t(266) = 2.17, p = .031, q = .041, d = .25, at posttreatment. Measures of reward learning did not differ between the two groups. Improvements in reward anticipation-motivation and in response to reward attainment correlated with improvements in the clinical status measures.
Conclusions:
Targeting positive affect results in superior improvements in clinical status and reward sensitivity than targeting negative affect. This is the first demonstration of differential target engagement across two psychological interventions for anxious or depressed individuals with low positive affect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
... Ultimately, the cumulative benefits of simulationbased self-updating in SAD ought to stimulate the pathways from the vmPFC to downstream neural-reward centers elsewhere in the brain, outside the autobiographical memory system, which will enable socially anxious patients to begin adopting and benefiting from approach-oriented social-behavioral goals (Hudd & Moscovitch, 2020;Richey et al., 2014). Following successful schema updating, individuals with SAD should begin to engage in more frequent social-approach behaviors while also relinquishing avoidance-based self-regulatory strategies that block their ability to derive pleasure from social relationships and occupy valuable attentional resources that interfere with adaptive social problem solving and emotion regulation (see Alden et al., 2018;Barber, Michaelis, & Moscovitch, 2021;Gilboa-Schechtman et al., 2014;Kashdan et al., 2011;Moscovitch, Rowa, et al., 2013;Plasencia et al., 2016). ...
Negative schemas lie at the core of many common and debilitating mental disorders. Thus, intervention scientists and clinicians have long recognized the importance of designing effective interventions that target schema change. Here, we suggest that the optimal development and administration of such interventions can benefit from a framework outlining how schema change occurs in the brain. Guided by basic neuroscientific findings, we provide a memory-based neurocognitive framework for conceptualizing how schemas emerge and change over time and how they can be modified during psychological treatment of clinical disorders. We highlight the critical roles of the hippocampus, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and posterior neocortex in directing schema-congruent and -incongruent learning (SCIL) in the interactive neural network that comprises the autobiographical memory system. We then use this framework, which we call the SCIL model, to derive new insights about the optimal design features of clinical interventions that aim to strengthen or weaken schema-based knowledge through the core processes of episodic mental simulation and prediction error. Finally, we examine clinical applications of the SCIL model to schema-change interventions in psychotherapy and provide cognitive-behavior therapy for social anxiety disorder as an illustrative example.
... Indeed, SAD is associated with a wide range of emotion regulation difficulties (e.g., Helbig-Lang et al., 2015;Mennin et al., 2007). Socially anxious individuals may feel distressed when experiencing and expressing positive emotion due to concerns about bringing attention to themselves, leading to attempts to inhibit the expression of emotions in general (Kashdan et al., 2011;Turk et al., 2005). Consistently, socially anxious individuals engage in more positive emotion suppression compared to nonsocially anxious individuals (Farmer & Kashdan, 2012). ...
Fear of negative evaluation (FNE) is a hallmark feature of social anxiety disorder (SAD). There is also evidence that people with SAD fear receiving positive evaluation, and that fear of positive evaluation (FPE) is distinct from FNE. However, researchers have speculated that concerns related to negative evaluation may actually underlie FPE. This study sought to advance our understanding of FPE by employing both quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the reasons underlying participants’ endorsement of FPE on the Fear of Positive Evaluation Scale (FPES; Weeks, Heimberg, & Rodebaugh, 2008) and the extent to which these reasons reflect FNE versus FPE in a sample of individuals with SAD (n = 47) and a nonclinical comparison group (n = 49). Results indicated that responses to the FPES items primarily reflected an underlying FNE. Consistent with contemporary cognitive‐behavioral theories of SAD, fear of proximal or eventual negative judgment emerged as the most common reason for participants’ responses on the FPES. However, participants reported other reasons that did not reflect FNE, such as fear of hurting people’s feelings, and uncertainty associated with positive evaluation. All of the reasons underlying participants’ ratings on the FPES were reported by both the SAD group and the nonclinical comparison group; however, individuals with SAD endorsed each of the reasons to a greater extent. These findings suggest that the FPES does not exclusively assess FPE as intended; however, the emergence and endorsement of reasons other than FNE suggests that FPE exists as a distinct construct.
... The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, includes a specifier for performance-only social anxiety (APA, 2013), and research has supported two presentation categories of social anxiety: social interaction anxiety, which relates to apprehension about coming into contact with or speaking with others, and social observation or social performance anxiety, which concerns circumstances in which people are observed by others, presenting, or performing (see Kashdan, 2004). People who have high degrees of social interaction anxiety report losing interest in enjoyable activities, having less energy, being less satisfied in their relationships, and having more behavioural inhibition (Kashdan, 2004;Kashdan et al. 2008;Kashdan et al., 2011a;Kashdan et al., 2011b). ...
According to literature, a person's level of social connection greatly influences how brave they will be when speaking in front of others. In the twenty-first century, speaking up in public with confidence is crucial for all undergraduate students. Therefore, after completing their university degree, every undergraduate student needs to have sufficient social interaction. Additionally, a student's level of social anxiety affects how much they engage with others. The amount of social interaction anxiety experienced by undergraduate students at Nigerian universities, however, has received less attention in the literature. This study investigated the undergraduate students at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka's level of social interaction anxiety. A sample of 223 undergraduate students from the University of Nigeria was used in this cross-sectional survey study. Data were gathered using the social interaction anxiety scale (α = .86), and frequency, percentage, and bar charts were utilized to analyze the results. The findings showed that most undergraduate students reported very high levels of social interaction anxiety. This means that if this high degree of social interaction anxiety is not addressed, undergraduate students will not be able to properly develop their social interaction.
... As it relates to the current study, research has shown that offline social support is associated with increased self-regulation [50] while social skills deficits have an adverse effect [26] . The ability to understand and manage one's behavior involves many different biopsychosocial mechanisms, which taken together, can assist us in understanding how social media addiction develops and is maintained. ...
Social media can be used to acquire online social support, and this online support appears to offer similar benefits to face-to-face social support. However, some research suggests that gaining this online support may increase the likelihood of developing a dependence on online platforms leading to addictive behaviors toward social media. Individual differences likely play a role in predicting who is most or least vulnerable to social media addiction, and the competing hypotheses of social enhancement (i.e., rich-get-richer) versus social compensation (i.e., poor-get-richer) help contextualize the use of social media, including addictive use. The present study explored the association between online social support and addictive use of social media, as well as the potential moderating roles of social anxiety and offline social support. Results showed that online social support was positively correlated with addictive use of social media, and social anxiety and offline social support significantly moderated the relationship between online social support and addictive use of social media. Results are discussed in relation to the “rich-get-richer” hypothesis, and implications regarding social anxiety and the importance of offline social support and clinical practice are considered.
... Other research emphasizes cognitive-behavioural factors such as maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (Farmer & Kashdan, 2012;Kashdan et al., 2013), experiential avoidance (Kashdan et al., 2013;Kashdan & Breen, 2008;Kashdan & Steger, 2006;Rodebaugh & Shumaker, 2012), and excessive use of maladaptive self-regulation strategies during social interaction (Kashdan et al., 2011;Rodebaugh & Heimberg, 2008). Studies supporting this view have shown that people with SAD are motivated to suppress displays of emotion and conceal other aspects of themselves that they worry others might evaluate negatively (Moscovitch et al., 2013), resulting in the potential depletion of cognitive resources required to benefit from positive social experiences (see Morrison & Heimberg, 2013). ...
Prior research has shown that Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is associated with significantly diminished positive affect (PA). Few studies have examined PA reactivity to pleasant experimental stimuli in individuals with SAD and whether emotional responses might be moderated by social context. Here, we investigated repeated measures of PA reactivity among individuals with SAD (n = 46) and healthy controls (HC; n = 39) in response to standardized neutral images, pleasant music, and social versus nonsocial guided imagery. Primary analyses revealed that SAD and HC participants did not differ in their PA reactivity when PA was conceptualized as a unitary construct. Exploratory analyses examining discrete subfacets of PA revealed potential deficits for SAD participants in relaxed and content PA, but not activated PA. Although participants with SAD reported relatively lower levels of relaxed and content PA overall compared with controls, they exhibited normal increases in all PA subfacets in response to pleasant music as well as pleasant social and nonsocial stimuli. These findings support a more nuanced conclusion about PA deficits in SAD than is described in the extant literature, suggesting that detecting PA deficits in SAD may depend upon how PA is conceptualized, evoked, and measured. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
... To better characterize the association between patterns in ER strategy selections over time with how affect changes over time, this study investigates the order of transitions that people high in trait social anxiety symptoms make, or fail to make, between 20 different ER strategies (i.e., their strategy switches). The sample is composed of individuals scoring relatively high on a measure of trait social anxiety symptom severity given previous research showing that socially anxious people have deficits in ER (Jazaieri et al., 2014) and have lower intensity and less lasting positive emotions than healthy, non-anxious people (Kashdan et al., 2011). Table 4 Correlations between average recurrence rate, determinism, entropy, stability, and spread values across 1000 simulated data sets of N = 100, k = 10, and L = 100 ...
We present a novel method for quantifying transitions within multivariate binary time series data, using a sliding series of transition matrices, to derive metrics of stability and spread. We define stability as the trace of a transition matrix divided by the sum of all observed elements within that matrix. We define spread as the number of all non-zero cells in a transition matrix divided by the number of all possible cells in that matrix. We developed this method to allow investigation into high-dimensional, sparse data matrices for which existing binary time series methods are not designed. Results from 1728 simulations varying six parameters suggest that unique information is captured by both metrics, and that stability and spread values have a moderate inverse association. Further, simulations suggest that this method can be reliably applied to time series with as few as nine observations per person, where at least five consecutive observations construct each overlapping transition matrix, and at least four time series variables compose each transition matrix. A pre-registered application of this method using 4 weeks of ecological momentary assessment data (N = 110) showed that stability and spread in the use of 20 emotion regulation strategies predict next timepoint affect after accounting for affect and anxiety’s auto-regressive and cross-lagged effects. Stability, but not spread, also predicted next timepoint anxiety. This method shows promise for meaningfully quantifying two unique aspects of switching behavior in multivariate binary time series data.
... The limited resources of self-control theory posit that individuals' self-control strength depends on limited resources, and all self-control behaviors (including emotion regulation, mind control, and decision-making) consume the same resources (31). The depletion of self-control resources in some areas leads to a decline in self-control ability (32). One recent study showed that individuals with social anxiety risk poor self-control after social interaction (33). ...
Background and Aims
Mobile phone addiction among college students has gained considerable research attention because of its adverse effects on their health and academic performance. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying the relationship between shyness and mobile phone addiction among college students.
Methods
Four questionnaires were used to examine whether mobile phone addiction tendency was predicted by shyness and the mediating roles of social anxiety and self-control among 3,189 Chinese college students. Correlation and mediation analyses were conducted using Hayes PROCESS.
Results
The results showed that (1) social anxiety (indirect effect = 0.22, 95% CI = 0.18–0.26) and self-control (indirect effect = 0.23, 95% CI = 0.21–0.25) played a partial mediating role in the relationship between shyness and mobile phone addiction tendency; (2) social anxiety and self-control also mediated the link between shyness and mobile phone addiction tendency sequentially (indirect effect = 0.10, 95% CI = 0.09 to 0.12).
Conclusion
These results suggest that mobile phone addiction among shy college students could be eliminated by alleviating social anxiety and strengthening self-control.
... 明确感到社交焦虑 [2] ，且社交媒体焦虑会产生降低社交倾向 [3] 、降低自我表露意向 [4] 、滋生 网络被害恐惧感 [5] 等消极影响。由此可见，社交媒体焦虑业已成为一项青少年社会化过程中 影响身心健康发展的潜在威胁。然而遗憾的是，目前国内学界大都将研究重点置于线下的学 业焦虑 [6] 、职业焦虑 [7] 、现实人际焦虑 [8] 等议题，缺乏对于社交媒体焦虑形成机制的实证归 因。因此，本研究聚焦于大学生社交媒体焦虑的影响因素和形成机制的剖析，以期更加精准 的对线上社交焦虑进行缓解和预防，进而提出改善大学生的身心健康的循证对策。 自我控制(Self-control)，作为个体人格结构当中自我调控系统的组成部分之一 [9] ，是 指个体因抑制或克服自身的欲望、需求而改变固有的或者习惯的行为、思维的方式的过程 [10] 。自我控制理论(Self-control theory)指出，自我控制水平较低的个体通常倾向于从事可 带来短期利益的行为并忽视该行为所造成的长期消极后果 [11] ，且低自我控制会削弱个体在 社交情境中可能经历的积极体验与正向结果，从而加剧其社交焦虑症状 [12] 。换句话说，由 于社会焦虑的个体试图控制他们的焦虑，并且努力从事能够使自身避免被社会排斥的行为， 而这种控制机能的缺乏遂致使其难以得到由积极社会互动而产生的良性回报 [13] 。网络社交 媒体作为一项当下青少年生活的必需品，能够在短时间内迅速满足个体的信息需求、娱乐需 求、交往需求，在稳定的自我控制系统尚未形成之时，延迟享受障碍会给青少年群体的长期 目标实现增设诸多干扰因素。当个体因过度透支长期、系统性个人目标而导致的自我心理预 期与他人对自己的预期相冲突时，其对于线上焦虑感可能也会相继提升。由此，本研究提出 假 H1：低自我控制对大学生社交媒体焦虑具有显著正向影响。 ...
Objective: The current study aims to explore the relationship among low self-control, Tiktok intensity, and social media anxiety and test the moderating effects of bridging social capital and bonding social capital on the mediation paths. Methods: A sample of 743 university students were recruited in the study to complete the questionnaires of low self-control, Tiktok intensity, social anxiety of social media, and social capital, and the study using structural equation model and Johnson-Neyman analysis to test hypothesis. Results: Low self-control has a significant and direct effect on social media anxiety (β = 0.381, P＜0.001) and a significant indirect effect through Tiktok intensity (β = 0.101, P＜0.05; β = 0.157, P＜0.001). Bridging social capital and bonding social capital could significantly and negatively moderate the effect of Tiktok intensity on social media anxiety. Conclusions: Tiktok intensity acts as a mediator between low self-control and social anxiety of social media, while bridging social capital and bonding social capital play protective roles in the effects of Tiktok intensity on social media anxiety.
Background
Individuals with social anxiety experience a larger number of negative life events. However, studies applying the stress generation model to social anxiety are limited, and factors predicting stress generation have not been adequately examined. This study examined whether post-event processing (PEP) predicted stress generation in social anxiety.
Methods
Five hundred students participated in the survey. The survey was conducted at two time points (T1 and T2), collecting data regarding PEP, negative life events (negative interpersonal dependent events, negative non-interpersonal dependent events, and negative independent events), social anxiety symptoms, and depressive symptoms.
Results
PEP measured at T1 did not significantly predict the experience of negative dependent events at T2. Social anxiety symptoms did not predict the experience of negative interpersonal dependent events, while depressive symptoms predicted the experience of all negative life events.
Conclusions
PEP may not be a predictor of stress generation in social anxiety. The influence of depressive symptoms should be considered in the stress generation model.
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) tends to emerge during adolescence and is more prevalent among those assigned female at birth. Parental social anxiety confers risk for adolescent SAD but less is known regarding protective factors. Research suggests that emotion differentiation (the ability to discriminate between similarly valenced emotions, e.g., fear vs. sadness vs. anger) may be protective, as it is associated with adaptive psychosocial outcomes. However, little work has examined how emotion differentiation influences the development of SAD, particularly during periods of higher risk such as adolescence. In a longitudinal study of adolescent girls at high temperamental risk for SAD (aged 11–14-years; n=114), we tested whether emotion differentiation (derived using negative and positive emotion ratings from 16-day ecological momentary assessments at baseline) moderated the relationship between parental and adolescent social anxiety symptoms across two years. Results revealed significant moderation by negative (but not positive) emotion differentiation (p=.042): Baseline parental social anxiety was positively associated with adolescent social anxiety symptoms at two-year follow-up but only at lower (vs. higher) levels of emotion differentiation, even after controlling for baseline depressive symptoms. Exploratory analyses showed that these effects were unique to avoidance of social situations (p=.014). Findings highlight the protective effects of emotion differentiation and have important clinical implications for understanding and treating SAD.
Anhedonia is characterized by diminished reward processing, which may be explained in part by dampening appraisals, or thoughts that blunt positive emotions. Experiential processing, or attending to sensory and bodily experience, may curb dampening appraisals, as compared to analytical processing, or conceptually thinking about an event. In this study, 96 participants with elevated anhedonia completed writing tasks, in which they recalled positive autobiographical memories. Participants recalled the first memory as they naturally would to assess spontaneous use of processing mode and were then randomized to recall the second positive memory using either experiential, analytical, or control instructions. Both spontaneous and instructed experiential processing were associated with greater positive affect and less dampening compared to analytical processing. Clinical implications include savoring pleasant sensations to reduce dampening and enhance positive affect in anhedonia.
Difficulty knowing when to switch emotion-regulation (ER) strategies is theorized to be a key pathway to emotion dysregulation, but relatively few studies have empirically examined this. We applied a new order-based metric to quantify how 109 socially anxious people switched between 19 different ER strategies (or chose not to regulate at all) throughout a 5-week ecological-momentary-assessment (EMA) study that yielded 12,616 observations. We tested whether state- and trait-anxiety reports and their interaction predicted differences in ER strategy switching. Results indicated that people with relatively higher social-anxiety symptoms switch more often between ER strategies during periods of high average state anxiety but less often during periods of high variability in state anxiety than less socially anxious people. Interventions focused on helping socially anxious people learn how ER strategies are connected to variations in state anxiety might hold promise to increase adaptive ER-switching decisions. More broadly, expanding ER-switching interventions to consider the role of changing situations is an important next step.
The study aimed to know the predictive ability of fear of
negative evaluation and self-control in satisfaction with life among
female students of the College of Business Administration at the
University of Hafr Al-Batin. The study sample consisted of (234)
students, The fear of negative evaluation scale, the self-control
scale, and the satisfaction with life scale were used, The results
showed that the level of fear of negative evaluation (as a whole)
came at a low level, self-control (as a whole) and satisfaction with
life (as a whole) came at a medium level, There is a negative
correlation between predictors (fear of evaluation and selfcontrol),
and there is a statistically significant positive correlation
between self-control and life satisfaction, It was found that the
predictive model of the variables predicted by the predicted
variable (life satisfaction) was statistically significant, and the
variable (self-adjustment) was the only variable in which the
proportion of the explanatory variance had a statistical function of
the total explanatory variance of the predictive model, The study
recommended the preparation of educational and rehabilitation
programs in universities that would reduce the fear of negative
evaluation, which would enable them to control and be fully
satisfied with their live
Expressive suppression (ES; reducing emotional expression) is linked with reduced social connectedness in individuals with anxiety or depression. One implication is that people who use ES may have difficulty establishing a bond with their therapist which may impede clinical improvement. We examined this hypothesis in 33 adults with clinically elevated anxiety or depression receiving treatment focused on enhancing positive thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. At baseline, participants rated ES for positive and negative emotions during a standardized conversation task designed to generate connectedness. They also rated measures of early (session 3) perceived therapeutic bond and treatment outcomes (i.e. positive affect and social connectedness). ES of positive (r = -.39, p = .018), but not negative (r = .06, p = .747), emotions was negatively associated with therapeutic bond. Therapeutic bond mediated the relationship between greater ES of positive emotions during affiliation and lower post-treatment positive affect, 95% bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval [-0.021, -0.000], adjusted for pre-treatment positive affect, as well as lower post-treatment social connectedness [-0.397, -0.015]; however, the indirect effect was not significant when accounting for pre-treatment social connectedness (p > .05). ES of positive emotions may be an important factor in the development of therapeutic bond and therefore treatment outcomes for individuals with anxiety or depression.
• Matematiikkaanliittyvien tunteiden yhteyttä matematiikan osaamiseen mitattiin ensimmäisen kerran osana Kansallisen arviointikeskuksen matematiikan osaamistasoarviointia vuonna 2015. Vuoden 2021 arvioinnissa käytössä oli aiemmasta mittarista paranneltu versio.
• Oppilailta löydettiin viisi erilaista tunneprofiilia. Tunteilla on osaamistasoon pääosin positiivinen yhteys, kun taas korkeampi osaamistaso on yhteydessä tunteisiin lisäten positiivisten tunteiden ja vähentäen negatiivisten tunteiden yleisyyttä.
• Oppilaskeskeisesti tarkasteltaessa yksilöä huomioivat opetuskäytänteet voimistavat positiivisia ja heikentävät negatiivisia tunteita.
• Uusi tunnemittari on kehitys- ja käyttökelpoinen väline arviointitutkimuksien osaksi.
Positive and negative interpretation biases have been conceptualized as distinct constructs related to anxiety and social anxiety, but the field lacks psychometrically sound self-report measures to assess positive and negative interpretations of social ambiguity. This study examined the psychometric properties of the Ambiguous Social Scenarios Questionnaire (ASSQ) in two samples of 2,188 and 454 undergraduates with varying levels of anxiety. Results supported a bifactor model with a general interpretation bias factor and specific factors assessing positive and negative interpretation biases. The ASSQ demonstrated measurement invariance across genders and levels of social anxiety, as well as convergent and incremental validity with two existing measures of interpretation bias. It also demonstrated concurrent validity with attentional control, intolerance of uncertainty, total anxiety, and social anxiety and discriminant validity with emotional awareness. Findings support the ASSQ as a brief, valid, and reliable measure of positive and negative interpretation biases toward ambiguous social situations.
Cognition is mediated and combined by mental processes formed by inner speech and cognitive processes play a key role in generalized anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder. The aim of this study was to compare the frequency and content of inner speech in people with generalized anxiety disorder traits, obsessive-compulsive disorder traits and normal. 348 (boys: 203, girls: 145) students of Shahid Beheshti University were selected by convenience sampling method and participants answered the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Scale (Spitzer et al., 2006), the Self-talk Scale (Brinthaupt et al.., 2009) and the Padua Inventory–Washington State University Revision (Burns et al.., 1996). Findings were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance and multivariate analysis of variance. The results showed a significant difference in frequency between the normal group and clinical groups. Also, the research findings showed a significant difference between the normal group and clinical groups in the negative subscales of inner speech content (self-criticism and social assessment) and not the positive subscales (self-regulation and self-reinforcement).
Background:
Stress generation theory suggests that people engage in certain behaviors that causally generate "dependent" stressful life events. Stress generation has primarily been studied in the context of depression with limited consideration of anxiety. People with social anxiety exhibit maladaptive social and regulatory behaviors that may uniquely generate stress.
Method:
Across two studies, we examined if people with elevated social anxiety experienced more dependent stressful life events than those lower in social anxiety. On an exploratory basis, we examined differences in perceived intensity, chronicity, and self-blame of stressful life events. As a conservative test, we examined whether observed relationships held after covarying depression symptoms. Community adults (Ns = 303; 87) completed semi-structured interviews about recent stressful life events.
Results:
Participants with higher social anxiety symptoms (Study 1) and social anxiety disorder (SAD; Study 2) reported more dependent stressful life events than those with lower social anxiety. In Study 2, healthy controls rated dependent events as less impactful than independent events; those with SAD rated dependent and independent events as equally impactful. Regardless of social anxiety symptoms, participants placed greater blame on themselves for the occurrence of dependent than independent events.
Limitations:
Life events interviews are retrospective and preclude conclusions about short-term changes. Mechanisms of stress generation were not assessed.
Conclusions:
Results provide initial evidence for the role of stress generation in social anxiety that may be distinct from depression. Implications for assessing and treating unique and shared features of affective disorders are discussed.
Experiencing childhood trauma (CT) can create barriers for developing relationships and is a risk factor for anxiety and depression. Expressive suppression (ES; i.e., reducing expression associated with experiencing emotions) might explain the link between CT and relationship formation difficulties. We examined the association between (1) CT and ES during a dyadic paradigm intended to facilitate connectedness between unacquainted partners and (2) ES and desire for future interaction (DFI). Individuals with an anxiety or depressive disorder diagnosis (N=77) interacted with a trained confederate; partners answered a series of increasingly intimate questions about themselves. Participant ES for positive and negative emotions, and participant and confederate DFI were collected during the task. Participants completed global anxiety, depression, and CT measures. CT correlated with positive (r=.35, p=.002), but not negative, ES (r=.13, p=.273). In a multiple linear regression model, CT predicted positive ES beyond symptom variables and gender, β=.318, t=2.59, p=.012. Positive ES correlated with participant (r=-.38, p=.001) and confederate DFI (r=-.40, p<.01); and predicted participant DFI beyond symptom variables and ethnicity, β=-.358, t=-3.18, p=.002, and confederate DFI, β=-.390, t=-3.51, p=.001, beyond symptom variables. Mediation analyses suggested positive ES accounted for the relationship between greater CT severity and less desire for future interaction from participants, 95%CI [-0.26,-0.02], and confederates, [-0.38, -0.01]. Positive ES may be an important factor in the reduced capacity to form new social relationships for individuals with a history of CT, anxiety, and depression.
The personality construct of alexithymia is thought to reflect a deficit in the cognitive processing and regulation of emotional states. To explore the relations between alexithymia and emotional responding, 50 older adults (28 men, 22 women) were studied across different contexts: (1) initial exposure to an emotion‐evoking movie; (2) second exposure to that stimulus; (3) reports of rumination and social sharing; and (4) describing their emotional response (verbal re‐evocation). Facets of the alexithymia construct were associated at the initial exposure with lower emotional responses at the cognitive‐experiential level, but with higher emotional responses at the physiological level as measured by heart rate. At the second exposure, the results were replicated for physiological responses. Certain facets of alexithymia were associated also with lower reports of rumination and social sharing involving emotional aspects, and with a lower proportion of emotional words related to the emotional stimulus during the verbal re‐evocation.
Several literatures converge on the idea that approach and positive affect related to goal pursuit are managed by one self-regulatory system and that avoidance (or withdrawal) and negative affect related to threats are managed by a second self-regulatory system. After briefly reviewing these literatures, the authors consider the relation of these themes to the broader domain of personality. In particular, they map individual differences in the responsivity of the approach system onto the personality dimension of extraversion and map individual differences in the responsivity of the withdrawal system onto the dimension of neuroticism. This mapping requires a slight refocusing of current conceptions of extraversion and neuroticism. However, such a refocusing brings a gain as well as a cost: In particular, it would embed these dimensions more explicitly in a process-oriented conceptualization of action control.
A substantial literature indicates that anxiety is often associated with selec- tive attention to threat cues. Socially anxious individuals are excessively concerned about negative evaluation by others. One might therefore predict that high social anxiety would be associated with selective attention to negative facial expressions. On the other hand, some recent models have suggested that social anxiety may be associated with reduced processing of external social cues. A modi® ed dot-probe task was used to investigate face attention. High and low socially anxious individuals were presented with pairs of pictures, consisting of a face (positive, neutral, or negative) and a household object, under conditions of social-evaluative threat or no threat. The results indicated that, compared to low socially anxious individuals, high socially anxious individuals show an attentional bias away from emotional (positive and negative) faces but this effect is only observed under conditions of social-evaluative threat. Theoretical and clinical implications of the results are discussed.
Over twenty years of research have examined the cognitive consequences of positive affect states, and suggested that positive affect leads to a broadening of cognition (see review by Fredrickson, 2001). However, this research has primarily examined positive affect that is low in approach motivational intensity (e.g., contentment). More recently, we have systematically examined positive affect that varies in approach motivational intensity, and found that positive affect high in approach motivation (e.g., desire) narrows cognition, whereas positive affect low in approach motivation broadens cognition (e.g., Gable & Harmon-Jones, 2008a21.
Gable , P. A. and Harmon-Jones , E. 2008a . Approach-motivated positive affect reduces breadth of attention . Psychological Science , 19 : 476 – 482 . [CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®]View all references; Harmon-Jones & Gable, 2009). In this article we will review past models and present a motivational dimension model of affect that expands understanding of how affective states influence attentional and cognitive breadth. We then review research that has varied the motivational intensity of positive and negative affect and found that affect of low motivational intensity broadens cognitive processes, whereas affect of high motivational intensity narrows cognitive processes.
Positive psychologists have developed a variety of techniques to increase well-being. This study explored whether preferences for some interventions are linked to preferences for other interventions. A total of 792 participants received up to six positive psychology exercises. After each exercise, participants indicated their preference for each exercise and how often they engaged in it. A factor analysis of these scores revealed three groupings of subjective preferences: active-constructive responding and savoring; blessings and life summary; and gratitude visit and strengths. Individuals who had high preference for an exercise were more likely to complete the exercise. Implications for application of positive psychology exercises and future recommendations are discussed including the use of such a framework for tailoring custom programs of interventions.
Details the psychometric evaluation of the Quality of Life Inventory (QOLI), a measure of life satisfaction that may complement symptom-oriented measures of psychological functioning in evaluating the outcome of interventions aimed at ameliorating mental disorders, disabling physical illnesses, and community-wide social problems. Test–retest coefficients for the QOLI ranged from .80 to .91, and internal consistency coefficients ranged from .77 to .89 across 3 clinical and 3 nonclinical samples. QOLI item–total correlations were found to be adequate, and the QOLI had significantly positive correlations with 7 related measures of subjective well-being, including a peer rating and clinical interview measure. Significant negative correlations were obtained between the QOLI and measures of general psychopathology and depression. Clinical and nonclinical criterion groups differed significantly in mean QOLI scores. QOLI norms are presented, and the usefulness of the QOLI for assessing treatment outcome and for psychotherapy treatment planning is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
W. Wilson's (1967) review of the area of subjective well-being (SWB) advanced several conclusions regarding those who report high levels of "happiness." A number of his conclusions have been overturned: youth and modest aspirations no longer are seen as prerequisites of SWB. E. Diener's (1984) review placed greater emphasis on theories that stressed psychological factors. In the current article, the authors review current evidence for Wilson's conclusions and discuss modern theories of SWB that stress dispositional influences, adaptation, goals, and coping strategies. The next steps in the evolution of the field are to comprehend the interaction of psychological factors with life circumstances in producing SWB, to understand the causal pathways leading to happiness, understand the processes underlying adaptation to events, and develop theories that explain why certain variables differentially influence the different components of SWB (life satisfaction, pleasant affect, and unpleasant affect). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Counseling psychologists often work with clients to increase their well-being as well as to decrease their distress. One important aspect of well-being, highlighted particularly in humanistic theories of the counseling process, is perceived meaning in life. However, poor measurement has hampered research on meaning in life. In 3 studies, evidence is provided for the internal consistency, temporal stability, factor structure, and validity of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ), a new 10-item measure of the presence of, and the search for, meaning in life. A multitrait-multimethod matrix demonstrates the convergent and discriminant validity of the MLQ subscales across time and informants, in comparison with 2 other meaning scales. The MLQ offers several improvements over current meaning in life measures, including no item overlap with distress measures, a stable factor structure, better discriminant validity, a briefer format, and the ability to measure the search for meaning.
Associations between exercise and mental well-being have been documented repeatedly over the last two decades. More recently, there has been application of exercise interventions to clinical populations diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and eating disorders with evidence of substantial benefit. Nonetheless, attention to the efficacy of exercise interventions in clinical settings has been notably absent in the psychosocial treatment literature, as have been calls for the integration of these methods within the clinical practice of psychologists. In this article, we provide a quantitative and qualitative review of these efficacy studies in clinical samples and discuss the potential mechanism of action of exercise interventions, with attention to both biological and psychosocial processes. The meta-analysis of 11 treatment outcome studies of individuals with depression yielded a very large combined effect size for the advantage of exercise over control conditions: g = 1.39 (95% CI: .89–1.88), corresponding to a d = 1.42 (95% CI: .92–1.93). Based on these findings, we encourage clinicians to consider the role of adjunctive exercise interventions in their clinical practice and we discuss issues concerning this integration.
Individuals differ considerably in their emotion experience. Some experience emotions in a highly differentiated manner, clearly distinguishing among a variety of negative and positive discrete emotions. Others experience emotions in a relatively undifferentiated manner, treating a range of like-valence terms as interchangeable. Drawing on self-regulation theory, we hypothesised that indivi-duals with highly differentiated emotion experience should be better able to regulate emotions than individuals with poorly differentiated emotion experience. In particular, we hypothesised that emotion differentiation and emotion regulation would be positively related in the context of intense negative emotions, where the press for emotion regulation is generally greatest. To test this hypothesis, parti-cipants' negative and positive emotion differentiation was assessed using a 14-day diary protocol. Participants' regulation of negative and positive emotions was assessed using laboratory measures. As predicted, negative emotion differentiation was positively related to the frequency of negative emotion regulation, particularly at higher levels of emotional intensity.
This study examined the effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on the brain–behavior mechanisms of self-referential processing in patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Sixteen patients underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while encoding self-referential, valence, and orthographic features of social trait adjectives. Post-MBSR, 14 patients completed neuroimaging. Compared to baseline, MBSR completers showed (a) increased self-esteem and decreased anxiety, (b) increased positive and decreased nega-tive self-endorsement, (c) increased activity in a brain network related to attention regula-tion, and (d) reduced activity in brain systems implicated in conceptual-linguistic self-view. MBSR-related changes in maladaptive or distorted social self-view in adults diagnosed with SAD may be related to modulation of conceptual self-processing and attention regulation. Self-referential processing may serve as a functional biobehavioral target to measure the effects of mindfulness training. S ocial anxiety disorder (SAD) is a common and frequently debilitating condition character-ized by intense fear of evaluation in social or performance situations (Jefferys, 1997; Kessler et al., 1994). SAD has an early onset (Otto et al., 2001) and regularly precedes other anxiety, mood, and substance abuse/dependence disorders (Lampe, Salde, Issakidis, & Andrews, 2003; Matza, Revicki, Davidson, & Stewart, 2003). SAD is associated with significant distress and functional impairment in both work and social domains (Lochner et al., 2003; Rapee, 1995; Schneier et al., 1994) and typically persists unless treated (Clark & Wells, 1995). The early onset of SAD magnifies its impact, including increased school dropout (Van Ameringen, Mancini, & Farvolden, 2003), poor social integra-tion, and increased comorbid psychopathology (Lampe et al., 2003; Matza et al., 2003; Randall, Thomas, & Thevos, 2001).
Background: Research has shown that beliefs about one's capacity to savour positive outcomes, a form of perceived control over positive emotions, are largely independent of beliefs about coping, a form of perceived control over negative emotions. Aim: To describe a new measure of savouring beliefs, the Savoring Beliefs Inventory (SBI). Method: Six studies validating the SBI that is designed to assess individuals' perceptions of their ability to derive pleasure through anticipating upcoming positive events, savouring positive moments, and reminiscing about past positive experiences. Results: SBI scores were found to be: (a) positively correlated with affect intensity, extraversion, optimism, internal locus of control, reported self-control behaviours, life satisfaction, value fulfilment, self-esteem, and intensity and frequency of happiness; (b) negatively correlated with neuroticism, guilt, physical and social anhedonia, hopelessness, depression, and the frequency of unhappy and neutral affect; and (c) uncorrelated with socially desirable responding. SBI was validated prospec-tively by first measuring college students' savouring beliefs and then later assessing their behaviours and affects in looking forward to, enjoying the actual experience of, and looking back on their Christmas vacation. Within each of the three time frames, the relevant SBI subscale generally predicted behaviours and affects more strongly than did the subscales associated with the other two temporal orientations. Finally, SBI was cross-validated in a sample of older adults. Conclusion: These results provide strong evidence that the SBI is a valid and reliable measure of individuals' beliefs about their capacity to savour positive experiences through anticipation, present enjoyment, and reminiscence.
The effect of a grateful outlook on psychological and physical well-being was examined. In Studies 1 and 2, participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 experimental conditions (hassles, gratitude listing, and either neutral life events or social comparison); they then kept weekly (Study 1) or daily (Study 2) records of their moods, coping behaviors, health behaviors, physical symptoms, and overall life appraisals. In a 3rd study, persons with neuromuscular disease were randomly assigned to either the gratitude condition or to a control condition. The gratitude-outlook groups exhibited heightened well-being across several, though not all, of the outcome measures across the 3 studies, relative to the comparison groups. The effect on positive affect appeared to be the most robust finding. Results suggest that a conscious focus on blessings may have emotional and interpersonal benefits.
A substantial literature indicates that anxiety is often associated with selective attention to threat cues. Socially anxious individuals are excessively concerned about negative evaluation by others. One might therefore predict that high social anxiety would be associated with selective attention to negative facial expressions. On the other hand, some recent models have suggested that social anxiety may be associated with reduced processing of external social cues. A modified dot-probe task was used to investigate face attention. High and low socially anxious individuals were presented with pairs of pictures, consisting of a face (positive, neutral, or negative) and a household object, under conditions of social-evaluative threat or no threat. The results indicated that, compared to low socially anxious individuals, high socially anxious individuals show an attentional bias away from emotional (positive and negative) faces but this effect is only observed under conditions of social-evaluative threat. Theoretical and clinical implications of the results are discussed.
Ostracism is such a widely used and powerful tactic that the authors tested whether people would be affected by it even under remote and artificial circumstances. In Study 1, 1,486 participants from 62 countries accessed the authors' on-line experiment on the Internet. They were asked to use mental visualization while playing a virtual tossing game with two others (who were actually computer generated and controlled). Despite the minimal nature of their experience, the more participants were ostracized, the more they reported feeling bad, having less control, and losing a sense of belonging. In Study 2, ostracized participants were more likely to conform on a subsequent task. The results are discussed in terms of supporting K. D. Williams's (1997) need threat theory of ostracism.
Social phobia is increasingly recognized as a prevalent and socially impairing mental disorder. However, little data is available regarding the general and disease-specific impairments and disabilities associated with social phobia. Furthermore, most studies have not controlled for the confounding effects of comorbid conditions. This study investigates: (a) the generic quality of life; (b) work productivity; and, (c) various other disorder-specific social impairments in current cases with pure (n = 65), comorbid (n = 51) and subthreshold (n = 34) DSM-IV social phobia as compared to controls with no social phobia (subjects with a history of herpes infections). Social phobia cases reported a mean illness duration of 22.9 years with onset in childhood or adolescence. Current quality of life, as assessed by the SF-36, was significantly reduced in all social phobia groups, particularly in the scales measuring vitality, general health, mental health, role limitations due to emotional health, and social functioning. Comorbid cases revealed more severe reductions than pure and subthreshold social phobics. Findings from the Liebowitz self-rated disability scale indicated that: (a) social phobia affects most areas of life, but in particular education, career, and romantic relationship; (b) the presence of past and current comorbid conditions increases the frequency of disease-specific impairments; and, (c) subthreshold social phobia revealed slightly lower overall impairments than comorbid social phobics. Past week work productivity of social phobics was significantly diminished as indicated by: (a) a three-fold higher rate of unemployed cases; (b) elevated rates of work hours missed due to social phobia problems; and, (c) a reduced work performance. Overall, these findings underline that social phobia in our sample of adults, whether comorbid, subthreshold, or pure was a persisting and impairing condition, resulting in considerable subjective suffering and negative impact on work performance and social relationships. The current disabilities and impairments were usually less pronounced than in the past, presumably due to adaptive behaviors in life style of the respondents. Data also confirmed that social phobia is poorly recognized and rarely treated by the mental health system.
The present study examined the impact of a group treatment protocol based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) that was tailored toward the avoidant behaviors and life problems typical for socially anxious persons. Twenty-two participants enrolled in the group treatment, which consisted of 10 sessions. Twelve participants completed treatment. Post-treatment and follow-up data revealed significant decreases on the social phobia and experiential avoidance measures (follow-up effect sizes: 0.83 and 1.71, respectively). Completers' ratings of effectiveness in living, specifically pertaining to social relationships, significantly increased at follow-up. Symptoms decreased despite their not being a treatment target. This results suggests that symptom improvement may result from an increased willingness to both experience aversive emotions and engage in social behaviors that are consistent with what the participants valued, but previously avoided. Despite its exploratory nature and limitations, the study provides a basis for further application of ACT in this population.
Some investigators have argued that emotions, especially animal emotions, are illusory concepts outside the realm of scientific inquiry. With advances in neurobiology and neuroscience, however, researchers are proving this position wrong while moving closer to understanding the biology and psychology of emotion. In Affective Neuroscience, Jaak Panksepp argues that emotional systems in humans, as well as other animals, are necessarily combinations of innate and learned tendencies; there are no routine and credible ways to really separate the influences of nature and nurture in the control of behavior. The book shows how to move toward a new understanding by taking a psychobiological approach to the subject, examining how the neurobiology and neurochemistry of the mammalian brain shape the psychological experience of emotion. It includes chapters on sleep and arousal, pleasure and pain systems, the sources of rage and anger, and the neural control of sexuality. The book will appeal to researchers and professors in the field of emotion.
This article reports the development and validation of a scale to measure global life satisfaction, the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS). Among the various components of subjective well-being, the SWLS is narrowly focused to assess global life satisfaction and does not tap related constructs such as positive affect or loneliness. The SWLS is shown to have favorable psychometric properties, including high internal consistency and high temporal reliability. Scores on the SWLS correlate moderately to highly with other measures of subjective well-being, and correlate predictably with specific personality characteristics. It is noted that the SWLS is suited for use with different age groups, and other potential uses of the scale are discussed.
Socially anxious people often report high negative affect (NA) and low positive affect (PA). This mood state may be associated with elevated or undesired social evaluation, such as interactions with unfamiliar people or poor quality communication. In this study, high and low anxious undergraduates completed structured diaries assessing interaction partner familiarity, quality of communication, PA, and NA after conversations in their natural environment. Results supported hypotheses of higher NA and lower quality of communication in the anxious group. In addition, quality of communication and familiarity were differently related to NA in the high versus low anxious groups. Results suggest that social-interaction parameters affect high anxious individuals' mood. Implications of the current social interaction based results are contrasted with time-interval diary research.
The SWLS consists of 5-items that require a ratingon a 7-point Likert scale. Administration is rarely morethan a minute or 2 and can be completed by interview(including phone) or paper and pencil response. The in-strumentshouldnotbecompletedbyaproxyansweringfortheperson.Itemsofthe SWLSaresummedtocreatea total score that can range from 5 to 35.The SWLS is in the public domain. Permission isnot needed to use it. Further information regardingthe use and interpretation of the SWLS can be foundat the author’s Web site http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/∼ediener/SWLS.html. The Web site alsoincludes links to translations of the scale into 27languages.
Divergent trajectories characterize the aging mind: Processing capacity declines, while judgment, knowledge, and emotion regulation are relatively spared. We maintain that these different developmental trajectories have implications for emotion–cognition interactions. Following an overview of our theoretical position, we review empirical studies indicating that (a) older adults evidence superior cognitive performance for emotional relative to non-emotional information, (b) age differences are most evident when the emotional content is positively as opposed to negatively valenced, and (c) differences can be accounted for by changes in motivation posited in socioemotional selectivity theory.
Based on hierarchical models of emotional disorders, relationships between higher- and lower-order components of anxiety and depression and emotion-congruent cognitive biases were examined. Two groups of participants (n=189) were selected based on their scores on General Distress (the nonspecific factor of anxiety and depression). They performed an explicit memory test of incidentally-learned selfreferenced material and an emotional Stroop interference task, using three types of stimuli: anxiety-related, depression-related and neutral non-valenced words. It was hypothesized that an attentional bias for anxiety-relevant words and a memory bias for depression-relevant words would be best predicted by anxiety-related and depression-related measures, respectively. Strengthening the notion that demonstration of these types of biases is not reliable in subclinical populations, both a correlational analysis as well as a more powerful extreme group analysis could not detect the existence of any emotion-related cognitive biases.
Conflicting findings concerning the nature and presence of attentional bias in social anxiety and social phobia have been reported in the literature. This paper reports the findings of two studies comparing people with high and low social anxiety on dot probe tasks using words, faces photographed in front view, and faces photographed in profile as stimuli. In Study 1 those with high social anxiety displayed an attentional bias towards negative faces. The low social anxiety group showed an attentional bias towards positive faces. No significant effects were observed on the dot probe using words as stimuli. Study 2 used pairs of faces presented in profile as though looking at each other. One of the faces displayed either a positive, negative or neutral expression. The second face always had a neutral expression, and in half of the trials it was the subject's own face. The findings of this more ecologically valid procedure replicated those of Study 1. Facilitated attention to dots following emotional faces was specific to threatening facial stimuli. From these studies it appears that the facial dot probe task is a more sensitive index of attentional bias than the word task in a non-clinical sample with social anxiety.
It is typically assumed that people always want to feel good. Recent evidence, however, demonstrates that people want to feel unpleasant emotions, such as anger or fear, when these emotions promote the attainment of their long-term goals. If emotions are regulated for instrumental reasons, people should want to feel pleasant emotions when immediate benefits outweigh future benefits, but when future benefits outweigh immediate benefits, people may prefer to feel useful emotions, even if they are unpleasant. In this article, I describe an instrumental account of emotion regulation, review empirical evidence relevant to it, and discuss its implications for promoting adaptive emotional experiences.
Cognitive-behavioral theorists have proposed that fear of negative evaluation (FNE) is the core feature of social anxiety (Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997). However, emerging evidence supports the notion that fear of evaluation in general is important in social anxiety, including fear of positive evaluation (FPE) as well as negative evaluation (e.g., see Weeks, Heimberg, & Rodebaugh, 2008; Weeks, Heimberg, Rodebaugh, & Norton, 2008). The purposes of the present study were to test several new hypotheses related to this expanded conceptualization of social anxiety, as well as to replicate the two-factor structural model consisting of separate factors for fears of positive and negative evaluation originally reported by Weeks, Heimberg, and Rodebaugh, et al. (2008). The present findings further support FPE and FNE as distinct latent constructs. FPE and FNE related similarly to social anxiety but demonstrated unique relationships with several social anxiety-related constructs and emerged as distinct from several discriminant constructs with strong thematic overlap to FPE/FNE. The findings from the present study provide additional support for the hypothesis that fear of evaluation in general is important in social anxiety.
The majority of definitions, research studies, and treatment programs that focus on social anxiety characterize the prototypical person with the disorder as shy, submissive, inhibited, and risk averse. This stereotype, however, has been challenged recently. Specifically, a subset of people with social anxiety who are aggressive, impulsive novelty seekers deviate from that prototype. People with this atypical profile show greater functional impairment and are less likely to complete or fare well in treatment compared with inhibited socially anxious people. The difference between these two groups of people with social anxiety cannot be explained by the severity, type, or number of social fears, nor by co-occurring anxiety and mood disorders. Conclusions about the nature, course, and treatment of social anxiety may be compromised by not attending to diverse behaviors and self-regulatory styles. These concerns may be compounded in neurobiological and clinical studies of people with social anxiety problems that rely on smaller samples to make claims about brain patterns and the efficacy of particular treatments.
This study examined responsiveness of the dot probe measure of attentional bias to standard cognitive-behaviour group therapy (CBGT) for social phobia. People who met criteria for social phobia were randomly allocated to either an immediate treatment condition or a waiting list control (WLC). All participants completed self-report measures of social anxiety, depression, and anxiety sensitivity, a verbal dot probe and a facial dot-probe task before and after eight weeks of standard CBGT was undertaken by the treatment group. On the first measurement occasion the two groups had similar scores on all measures. On the second measurement occasion the self-report scores for the CBGT group were lower than those of the WLC group. Performance on the dot-probe tasks for the CBGT group had also changed. The treatment group appeared to direct their attention away from social threat words and threatening faces after CBGT.
Interest in mindfulness and its enhancement has burgeoned in recent years. In this article, we discuss in detail the nature of mindfulness and its relation to other, established theories of attention and awareness in day-to-day life. We then examine theory and evidence for the role of mindfulness in curtailing negative functioning and enhancing positive outcomes in several important life domains, including mental health, physical health, behavioral regulation, and interpersonal relationships. The processes through which mindfulness is theorized to have its beneficial effects are then discussed, along with proposed directions for theoretical development and empirical research.
Nothing is more familiar to people than their moods and emotions. Oddly, however, it is not clear how these two kinds of affective processes are related. Intuitively, it makes sense that emotional reactions are stronger when they are congruent with a preexisting mood, an idea reinforced by contemporary emotion theory. Yet empirically, it is uncertain whether moods actually facilitate emotional reactivity to mood-congruent stimuli. One approach to the question of how moods affect emotions is to study mood-disturbed individuals. This review describes recent experimental studies of emotional reactivity conducted with individuals suffering from major depression. Counter to intuitions, major depression is associated with reduced emotional reactivity to sad contexts. A novel account of emotions in depression is advanced to assimilate these findings. Implications for the study of depression and normal mood variation are considered.
Ostracism is readily detected and results in a number of negative reactions. For example, social exclusion is argued to interfere with self-regulation. Some recent work found that the negative effects of ostracism are more pronounced and prolonged in socially anxious people. Based on these findings we tested whether: (1) ostracism impairs self-regulation, and (2) such impairment persists longer in socially anxious people, as classified through the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (FNE). In Study 1, we found that relative to included participants (nonostracized controls), ostracized participants reported higher felt ostracism and ate more unhealthy but palatable biscuits at Time 1. After a 45-minute delay, only ostracized participants with higher levels of social anxiety reported continued felt ostracism and excessive eating. Similarly, in Study 2, self-regulation was defined as consuming an unpleasant, but healthy, beverage. We again observed a pattern of prolonged regulatory impairment only for ostracized socially anxious participants. Implications for the long-term impact of the exclusion of the socially anxious are discussed, as are the limitations of relying on the FNE as the sole measure of social anxiety.
Academic examination stress impairs regulatory behavior by consuming self-control strength (Oaten & Cheng, 2005). In this study, we tested whether a study intervention program, a form of repeated practice of self-control, could improve regulatory strength and dampen the debilitating effects of exam stress. We assessed 2 cohorts at baseline and again at the commencement of exams. Without any intervention, we replicated our previous findings of deteriorations in regulatory behaviors at exam time. Students receiving the study program, however, showed significant improvement in self-regulatory capacity as shown by an enhanced performance on a visual tracking task following a thought-suppression task. During examinations, these participants also reported significant decreases in smoking, alcohol, and caffeine consumption and an increase in healthy eating, emotional control, maintenance of household chores, attendance to commitments, monitoring of spending, and an improvement in study habits. Hence, the study program not only overcame deficits caused by exam stress but actually led to improvements in self-control even during exam time.