As internet use becomes increasingly integral to modern life, the hazards of excessive use are also becoming apparent. Prior research suggests that socially anxious individuals are particularly susceptible to problematic internet use. This vulnerability may relate to the perception of online communication as a safer means of interacting, due to greater control over self-presentation, decreased ...

Embarrassment is often conceptualized as produced by either an awkward interaction or a negative social evaluation. The present study uses the Cupach and Metts (1994) and Sharkey and Stafford (1990) typologies to analyze these two influences. Respondents (n=327) describe embarrassing situations they experienced and explain why they were embarrassing. Chi-square results suggest a difference betw...

Background & Objective:  Social anxiety disorder, which involves excessive anxiety of social situation due to fear of negative evaluation, is a debilitating disorder that leads to social dysfunction. The purpose of this study is to investigate Efficacy of Cognitive-Behavioral Group Therapy (CBGT) versus Group Hypnotherapy (GHT) on Brain/Behavioral Systems of Social Phobia Patients.  Materials ...

Social anxiety is characterized by an excessive fear of being embarrassed in social interactions or social performance situations. Emotional support can help to decrease or diminish social distress. Such support may play an important role at different points of social interaction. However, it is unclear how the beneficial effects of social support are represented in the brains of socially anxio...

Social class ranks people on the social ladder of society, and in this research we examine how perceptions of economic standing shape the way that individuals evaluate the self. Given that reminders of one's own subordinate status in society are an indicator of how society values the self in comparison to others, we predicted that chronic lower perceptions of economic standing vis-à-vis others ...

This paper presents an empirical study of the social context effect on facial expressions in a negative emotional setting. In this study participants watched sadness-inducing film clips under different social context (alone, with stranger or with friend) and their facial expressions were coded with the Observer XT using the Facial Expression Coding System (FACES; [1]). According to Fridlund’s B...

This paper, which is to be published as a chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, provides an introduction to social-choice theory with interpersonal comparisons of well-being. We argue that the most promising route of escape from the negative conclusion of Arrow’s theorem is to use a richer informational environment than ordinal measurability and the absence of interpersonal compa...

One of teenagers' key developmental tasks is to engage in new and meaningful relationships with peers and adults outside the family context. Attachment-derived expectations about the self and others in terms of internal attachment working models have the potential to shape such social reorientation processes critically and thereby influence adolescents' social-emotional development and social i...

Background and Aims: The interpretation bias which is an important factor in the pathology of social anxiety disorder, has been recently considered in therapeutic approaches. Given the importance of interpretation bias in the treatment of social anxiety, and despite the ambiguity in the relationship between social anxiety and interpretation bias, we compared the interpretation bias in individua...