Gaze perception in social anxiety and social anxiety disorder

Clinical observations suggest abnormal gaze perception to be an important indicator of social anxiety disorder (SAD). Experimental research has yet paid relatively little attention to the study of gaze perception in SAD. In this article we first discuss gaze perception in healthy human beings before reviewing self-referential and threat-related biases of gaze perception in clinical and non-clinical socially anxious samples. Relative to controls, socially anxious individuals exhibit an enhanced self-directed perception of gaze directions and demonstrate a pronounced fear of direct eye contact, though findings are less consistent regarding the avoidance of mutual gaze in SAD. Prospects for future research and clinical implications are discussed.

Race and discourse analysis: Building a dialogue in health service research and health care settings

Using a framework for discourse analysis developed by Van Dijk, the investigator will pinpoint the pathological forms of discourse on race, defined as 'race talk' in three professional domains: health services research, public health provider organizations, and literature on multiculturalism. Attention will then turn to developing an analytical strategy for building more meaningful dialogue on race. The retrieval of potential resources for dialogue will be drawn from the third domain. Analysis will focus on enhancing the prospects of converting 'race talk' into dialogue. This will be accomplished by characterizing the normative preconditions as formal procedural requirements for dialogue and then supplementing these conditions with others related specifically to race. From here, the practical implications of combining procedural requirements and resources in each of the domains will be considered. Finally, the author will attempt to determine how these selected resources might be employed to transform 'race talk' in practice and lay the groundwork for a dialogue of understanding. ^

Self-control in social decision making: A neurobiological perspective

Self-control is defined as the process in which thoughts, emotions, or prepotent responses are inhibited to efficiently enact a more focal goal. Self-control not only allows for more adaptive individual decision making but also promotes adaptive social decision making. In this chapter, we examine a burgeoning area of interdisciplinary research: the neuroscience of self-control in social decision making. We examine research on self-control in complex social contexts examined from a social neuroscience perspective. We review correlational evidence from neuroimaging studies and causal evidence from neuromodulation studies (i.e., brain stimulation). We specifically highlight research that shows that self-control involves the lateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) across a number of social domains and behaviors. Research has also begun to directly integrate nonsocial with social forms of self-control, showing that the basic neurobiological processes involved in stopping a motor response appear to be involved in social contexts that require self-control. Further, neural traits, such as baseline activation in the lateral PFC, can explain sources of individual differences in self-control capacity. We explore whether techniques that change brain functioning could target neural mechanisms related to self-control capacity to potentially enhance self-control in social behavior. Finally, we discuss several research questions ripe for examination. We broadly suggest that future research can now turn to exploring how neural traits and situational affordances interact to impact self-control in social decision making in order to continue to elucidate the processes that allow people to maintain and realize stable goals in a dynamic and often uncertain social environment.

A Neural Trait Approach to Exploring Individual Differences in Social Preferences

Research demonstrates that social preferences are characterized by significant individual differences. An important question, often overlooked, is from where do these individual differences originate? And what are the processes that underlie such differences? In this paper, we outline the neural trait approach to uncovering sources of individual differences in social preferences, particularly as evidenced in economic games. We focus on two primary methods—resting-state electroencephalography and structural magnetic resonance imaging—used by researchers to quantify task-independent, brain-based characteristics that are stable over time. We review research that has employed these methods to investigate social preferences with an emphasis on a key psychological process in social decision-making; namely, self-control. We then highlight future opportunities for the neural trait approach in cutting-edge decision-making research. Finally, we explore the debate about self-control in social decision-making and the potential role neural trait research could play in this issue.