Lecture 7 - Emotional competence and Anxiety
How do children who end up being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder differ in their
development from children who are not diagnosed with an anxiety disorder?
The answer to this question is not in any of the papers. So, what kind of research would be
needed to answer the previous question? → very large sample, very many years of following
children. Very hard to do.
Today:
• Focus on social anxiety (SA)
• What is ‘abnormal’ in social anxiety?
o Subjective feeling
o Physiological responses
o Cognitive processing
▪ Development of social fears and social cognition
o Motor expression
o Action tendencies
• Emotion socialization of fear
Social anxiety disorder (SAD)
• Extreme fear of social interactions
• Impairment of daily life
• Prevalence 3.8% (year) / 9,3% (lifetime)
• Runs in families
Differences in the components? (Crisan, Vulturar, Miclea, & Mui, 2016)
• Participants with subclinical social anxiety
o Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale > 30
▪ Fear and avoidance of social situations
o 52 undergraduate students (42 female)
o (not generalizable?)
• Reactivity to social stress
o Subjective experience
o Physiology reactivity
o Cognitive appraisal
o Behavior
Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) (Crisan et al., 2016)
• Baseline: relax (5min)
• Prepare speech for job interview (5min)
• Speech in front of committee of 3 (5 min)
• Counting backwards in steps of 13 (5 min)
• Recovery phase: relax (25 min)
1
,Measurements
Subjective anxiety ratings
Positive correlation between social anxiety and state anxiety (STAI)
High vs low socially anxious group (Harrewijn et al., 2016)
• 56 undergraduates
o All female
• 23 high: LSAS > 60
• 33 low: LSAS < 30
2
, Cortisol response
Why a negative relation I?
• Chronic stress in social situations
• Allostatic load (the effect of the body that is produced by having a stress response. If
you’re having the stress responses for a long time, some things will change in your
body)
• Low cortisol, because the body can’t produce so much cortisol all the time, or
because there’s a feedback loop. The brain structures detect a rise of cortisol in the
blood, they stop stimulating the adrenal gland to produce cortisol.
• Protective Inhibition of Self-regulation & Motivation
o Neuropsychological model (Tops et al., 2015)
• Cortisol response initially high; low when situation persists
Suggested consequences
• Vicious cycle:
o Lack of energy / motivation in social situations
o Poor performance
o Negative reactions
o More anxiety
Information processing biases
3
How do children who end up being diagnosed with an anxiety disorder differ in their
development from children who are not diagnosed with an anxiety disorder?
The answer to this question is not in any of the papers. So, what kind of research would be
needed to answer the previous question? → very large sample, very many years of following
children. Very hard to do.
Today:
• Focus on social anxiety (SA)
• What is ‘abnormal’ in social anxiety?
o Subjective feeling
o Physiological responses
o Cognitive processing
▪ Development of social fears and social cognition
o Motor expression
o Action tendencies
• Emotion socialization of fear
Social anxiety disorder (SAD)
• Extreme fear of social interactions
• Impairment of daily life
• Prevalence 3.8% (year) / 9,3% (lifetime)
• Runs in families
Differences in the components? (Crisan, Vulturar, Miclea, & Mui, 2016)
• Participants with subclinical social anxiety
o Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale > 30
▪ Fear and avoidance of social situations
o 52 undergraduate students (42 female)
o (not generalizable?)
• Reactivity to social stress
o Subjective experience
o Physiology reactivity
o Cognitive appraisal
o Behavior
Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) (Crisan et al., 2016)
• Baseline: relax (5min)
• Prepare speech for job interview (5min)
• Speech in front of committee of 3 (5 min)
• Counting backwards in steps of 13 (5 min)
• Recovery phase: relax (25 min)
1
,Measurements
Subjective anxiety ratings
Positive correlation between social anxiety and state anxiety (STAI)
High vs low socially anxious group (Harrewijn et al., 2016)
• 56 undergraduates
o All female
• 23 high: LSAS > 60
• 33 low: LSAS < 30
2
, Cortisol response
Why a negative relation I?
• Chronic stress in social situations
• Allostatic load (the effect of the body that is produced by having a stress response. If
you’re having the stress responses for a long time, some things will change in your
body)
• Low cortisol, because the body can’t produce so much cortisol all the time, or
because there’s a feedback loop. The brain structures detect a rise of cortisol in the
blood, they stop stimulating the adrenal gland to produce cortisol.
• Protective Inhibition of Self-regulation & Motivation
o Neuropsychological model (Tops et al., 2015)
• Cortisol response initially high; low when situation persists
Suggested consequences
• Vicious cycle:
o Lack of energy / motivation in social situations
o Poor performance
o Negative reactions
o More anxiety
Information processing biases
3
