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The article discusses the history of the New Right in the U.S. West from the 1970s through the mid 2010s, with a particular focus on the far right wing conservative Republican Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona Joe Arapio. An overview of Arapio's alleged use of fear against Mexican and Hispanic immigrants in Arizona, including in regard to Arapio's attitude towards immigration laws towards illegal immigrants, is provided.

The article discusses the 1970s folklore in the Inglewood, Washington state area on topics including trolls, peacocks and cats. An overview of the relationship between human beings and nature as expressed in Washington state folklore, including in regard to fear and anxiety towards wild animals and forests, is provided.

This study examined political advertisements placed by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency on Facebook and Instagram. Advertisements were computationally analyzed for four rhetorical techniques presumed to elicit anger and fear: negative identity-based language, inflammatory language, obscene language, and threatening language. Congruent with extant research on arousing emotional responses, advertising clickthrough rates were positively associated with inflammatory, obscene, and threatening language. Surprisingly, however, a negative relationship between clickthrough rate and the use of negative identity-based language was observed. Additional analyses showed that the advertisements were engaged with at rates that exceed industry benchmarks, and that clickthrough rates increased over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the 2012 American National Election Studies (ANES) panel data, this study explores the influence of the consumption of partisan information sources on affective polarization and investigates the mechanism underlying this relationship. The results show that exposure to pro-party television sources strengthens affective polarization among partisans. The polarizing effects of pro-party sources are mediated by the discrete negative emotions (i.e., anger and fear) toward presidential candidates. The study discusses the impact of selective exposure on deliberative and participatory democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains the relationship between social habitus, social mobility and shame feelings using Elias's theoretical frame of figurational sociology. Much work to date has centred on Bourdieu's theoretical formulations and while there are clear parallels with Elias, significant differences exist. Elias identified how shame functions as a key channel for the transmission of social tensions generated by the structure of social relations into the social habitus of individuals. We explain how apparently rational decision‐making in organisations obscures the emotional dynamics of shame and fear connected with processes of social elevation, habitus change and shifting power relations between social classes. Our empirical case concerns the brewer Arthur Guinness & Sons Ltd and the decision in 1927 to sanction a direct advertising campaign in Britain for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • BPNS is a protective factor for FOMO. • Individual relative deprivation was a mediator in the relation. • Social support from friends moderated the mediation effect. Abstract Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a new mental illness in digital era. Basing on the self-determination theory, the present study investigated how basic psychological needs satisfaction reducing FOMO. We tested a moderated mediating model that friend support moderated the mediating role of individual relative deprivation on the relation between basic psychological needs satisfaction and FOMO. A sample of 815 college students (mean age = 19.03 ± 1.13 years) participated our paper-and-pencil survey. Results showed that, basic psychological needs satisfaction negatively correlated with FOMO, and it reduced participants’ FOMO via reducing individual relative deprivation. What's more, the mediating effect was moderated by friend support, comparing with low friend support participants, the indirect effect was larger among high friend support participants. The present study indicated that basic psychological needs satisfaction, and friend support were protective factors for college students’ mental health. The limitations and implications were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study measured a variety of within-exposure fear changes and tested the relationship of each with treatment outcomes in exposure therapy. Method: We coded 459 videotaped exposure tasks from 111 participants in 3 clinical trials for pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD; POTS trials). Within exposures, fear level was observed continuously and alongside exposure process. Fear change metrics of interest were selected for relevance to mechanistic theory. Fear decreases were classified by function; nonhabituation decreases were associated with observed nonlearning processes (e.g., avoidance), whereas habituation decreases appeared to result from an internal and indirect process. Outcomes were posttreatment change in symptom severity, global improvement, and treatment response. Results: Greater cumulative habituation across treatment was associated with larger reductions in symptom severity, greater global improvement, and increased odds of treatment response. Fear activation, fear variability, and nonhabituation fear decreases did not predict any outcomes. Exploratory analyses examined fear changes during habituation and nonhabituation exposures; higher peak fear during nonhabituation exposures was associated with attenuated global improvement. Conclusions: Habituation is conceptually consistent with multiple mechanistic theories and should continue to be investigated as a practical marker of initial extinction learning and possible moderator of the relationship between fear activation and outcome. Results support the importance of functional and frequent fear measurement during exposures, and discussion considers implications of these findings for future studies aiming to understand learning during exposure and improve exposure delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outcome of the 2016 US presidential election cycle generated a great deal of attention about the political psychology of the average American voter. A familiar narrative was that authoritarianism, perhaps triggered by fears of cultural and economic change, was the primary driver of support for Donald Trump. This article argues that sexism has been underestimated as a political force, especially given the angry emotional climate. The article first explores the electoral role of sexism early in the campaign, finding that sexism powerfully predicted vote choice even after controlling for authoritarianism, partisanship, and other predispositions. Second, the article analyzes American National Election Studies time-series data to examine the impact of sexism in recent presidential elections, demonstrating that 2016 was the only year in which it played a large and significant role. Finally, a survey experiment tests the theorized causal mechanism underlying sexism's influence: the catalyzing power of anger versus fear. Fear sharply reduced sexism's impact on support for Trump relative to those who experienced anger. Further, anger powerfully mobilized sexists, a group that would normally be likely to stay home. These results illuminate the role that emotional undercurrents play in catalyzing group-based predispositions into politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on non-violent spectacular images produced and circulated by Islamic State (I.S.). These include I.S.’s declaration of the Caliphate, the group’s peculiar depiction of the good life, and its presumptive currency, the dinar. I.S.’s spectacle is explored through Situationist theory. Using the case study of the declaration of the Caliphate in June 2014, I explain how I.S. uses spectacle as a technology of rule. Then I move on to what I call the “counter-spectacle,” focusing on one case study, a program on Iraqi television al-Iraqiyya,Dawlat al-Khurafa(The Apocryphal State), that parodies I.S. as an entity. Probing ontological connections between “fear” and “fun” in the I.S. spectacle, the article concludes with a discussion of the im/possibility of countering spectacle, and the argument that the “success” of I.S.’s global spectacle rests on grafting I.S.’s own concentrated spectacle of rule onto the diffuse spectacle of a global commercial media discourse preoccupied with “Islam” as the main Other to a putative “Western” identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Previous research shows that news about Islamist terrorism can seriously affect citizens’ fear reactions and influence non-Muslims’ out-group perceptions of Muslims. We argue that news coverage that explicitly links Islam to terrorism or terrorists of the Islamic State (IS) may trigger fears in non-Muslim individuals. In contrast, news differentiation (i.e., explicitly distinguishing between Muslims and Muslim terrorists) may dampen particular fear reactions in citizens. To test the specific effects of news differentiation, a controlled laboratory experiment was conducted. Results showed that undifferentiated news about IS terrorism increased participants’ fear of terrorism and resulted in hostile perceptions toward Muslims in general. However, fear of terrorism only enhanced hostile attitudes toward Muslims for individuals with negative and moderately positive prior experiences with Muslims. For those with very positive experiences, no such relationship was found. Implications of these findings for journalism practice and intergroup relations in multicultural societies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of the present study was to assess the prevalence of emotion stereotypes in children’s television programming, in both educational and non-educational programming. It was hypothesized that gender stereotypes of emotion would still be prevalent in both entertainment and educational programming, with females showing more fear and sadness and males showing more anger, and that all shows would have more male than female characters. A total of 8 children’s programs were included for analysis: 4 entertainment programs and 4 educational programs. Programs were coded for the total number of males and females and for the emotions displayed by each character: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Overall, the analyses revealed that the majority of shows still have more male than female characters. Males were found to portray more of all emotions than females. Educational programming did not differ much in the amount of stereotypical versus counter-stereotypical emotion portrayed. Entertainment programming showed a trend toward more counter-stereotyped emotions. Future research should explore the influence of viewing specific shows on young children’s current gender stereotypes to assess the immediate impact of such viewing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Analyzing fear, hope, anger, and guilt in climate activism, we consider these pivotal emotions to climate activists. The way they are managed affects activists’ motivations and mobilizing strategies. This argument builds on the theoretical premise that emotions energize and orient all actions. Qualitative interviews were carried out with climate activists in Denmark, Sweden, and at two UNFCCC Conferences of Youth. Our analysis shows that fear motivates action by raising awareness of the threat of climate catastrophe. The paralyzing potential of fear is mediated by hope: Hope propels action while (collective) action generates hope and manages fear. The danger-alerting capacity of fear is embraced ‘internally’, but rejected as an effective emotion in mobilization. Instead, a hopeful ‘positive message’ is emphasized by activists from the Global North. Anger is treated cautiously as an emotion to be pacified/transformed and guilt/blaming is largely rejected too. There is a different pattern in the southern narratives. Here hope, guilt, and anger combine to manage acute fear. Hope lies in collective action but also in the angry ascription of responsibility to the North. Contrasting the North, acute fear is thus managed by anger. Different patterns of emotion management derive from different political and socio-material contexts/experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Learning about potential threats is critical for survival. Learned fear responses are acquired either through direct experiences or indirectly through social transmission. Social fear learning (SFL), also known as vicarious fear learning, is a paradigm successfully used for studying the transmission of threat information between individuals. Animal and human studies have begun to elucidate the behavioral, neural and molecular mechanisms of SFL. Recent research suggests that social learning mechanisms underlie a wide range of adaptive and maladaptive phenomena, from supporting flexible avoidance in dynamic environments to intergenerational transmission of trauma and anxiety disorders. This review discusses recent advances in SFL studies and their implications for basic, social and clinical sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Persons who stutter (PWS) and those with social anxiety disorder may exhibit fear of negative evaluation (FNE) and anxiety in social situations. However, the information processing biases that perpetuate these characteristics have had limited investigation. This study investigated judgment bias in social situations. Method: Participants included 50 adults who stutter and 45 age- and gender-matched fluent persons who do not stutter (PWNS), who made up the control group. Participants completed the Interpretation and Judgmental Questionnaire (Voncken, Bögels, & deVries, 2003), and threat scores were calculated. Results: There were no significant differences between PWS and PWNS in social threat or nonsocial threat scores. When the PWS group was divided on the basis of FNE and compared with PWNS participants without heightened anxiety (n = 35), the PWS with high FNE had significantly higher total social threat scores than the PWS with low FNE. The three groups did not differ in threat ratings for ambiguous or profoundly negative social situations. Conclusions: Judgment bias in PWS is mediated by the magnitude of FNE present; not all PWS exhibit judgment bias for social situations. Treatment implications include the need for psychosocial support addressing the negative impacts on quality of life and restrictions on social engagement that stuttering may cause in some individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Those who are socially anxious may use safety behaviors during feared social interactions to prevent negative outcomes. Safety behaviors are associated with anxiety maintenance and poorer treatment outcomes because they prevent fear extinction. Social anxiety disorder is often comorbid with stuttering. Speech pathologists reported in a recent publication (Helgadottir, Menzies, Onslow, Packman, & O'Brian, 2014a) that they often recommended procedures for clients that could be safety behaviors. This study investigated the self-reported use of safety behaviors by adults who stutter. Method: Participants were 133 adults who stutter enrolled in an online cognitive-behavior therapy program. Participants completed a questionnaire about their use of potential safety behaviors when anxious during social encounters. Correlations were computed between safety behaviors and pretreatment scores on measures of fear of negative evaluation and negative cognitions. Results: Of 133 participants, 132 reported that they used safety behaviors. Many of the safety behaviors correlated with higher scores for fear of negative evaluation and negative cognitions. Conclusions: Adults who stutter report using safety behaviors, and their use is associated with pretreatment fear of negative evaluation and unhelpful thoughts about stuttering. These results suggest that the negative effects of safety behaviors may extend to those who stutter, and further research is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a growing social consensus has emerged around the aspiration of a "post-racial" America: one where race is no longer a fault line for social strife or, perhaps, a morally significant trait whatsoever. This ambition, however, lies in tension with the most basic constitutional principle governing our treatment of race in the public sphere: that of "strict scrutiny." Post-racialism seeks to diminish the salience of race to near negligibility. The strict scrutiny of racial classifications, by contrast, significantly enhances the salience of race by treating it differently from virtually every other personal attribute or characteristic--including hair or eye color--extant in our society. This Article examines both the emergence of post-racialism and the development of the strict scrutiny doctrine in an attempt to resolve the underlying conflict. Both the history of strict scrutiny and the conceptual underpinnings of post-racialism indicate that, under the right conditions, racial classifications should stop receiving this extraordinary standard of review. Yet advocates of post-racialism have not acknowledged that strict scrutiny should have an end date--much less articulated the conditions for what that end date might be. The use of strict scrutiny in perpetuity, mixed with its uneasy relationship to the post-racial ambition, creates a doctrine that is inherently self-defeating. A close look at what we mean by "post-racial," and how we have dealt with similar concerns in other sites of social conflict (for example, sex, religion, and indigenous status), can begin the necessary work of determining when and whether strict scrutiny should come to an end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical studies in select systems suggest that social information--the incidental or deliberate information produced by animals and available to other animals--can fundamentally shape animal grouping behavior. However, to understand the role of social information in animal behavior and fitness, we must establish general theory that quantifies effects of social information across ecological contexts and generates expectations that can be applied across systems. Here we used dynamic state variable modeling to isolate effects of social information about food and predators on grouping behavior and fitness. We characterized optimal behavior from a set of strategies that included grouping with different numbers of conspecifics or heterospecifics and the option to forage or be vigilant over the course of a day. We show that the use of social information alone increases grouping behavior but constrains group size to limit competition, ultimately increasing individual fitness substantially across various ecological contexts. We also found that across various contexts, foraging in mixed-species groups is generally better than foraging in conspecific groups, supporting recent theory on competitioninformation quality trade-offs. Our findings suggest that multiple forms of social information shape animal grouping and fitness, which are sensitive to resource availability and predation pressure that determine information usefulness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adolescents are often described as egocentric, but a major source of this external behavior is the internal fear of adolescents have about feeling invisible, being different, and even their own mortality. Facing this fear through a curricular focus on death can help to combat this behavior. This can be accomplished through novel studies of books that include an honest discussion of death as a part of life and writing activities like composing self-obituaries. When used correctly, the subject of death can help students to develop goal-setting habits, better understand themselves and learn how to focus on the life that lies before them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we (four faculty members) draw on a specific rape-promoting incident on our campus as a case study for feminist faculty responses to civil rights issues on college campuses. We critically examine the incident and share our multipronged response as faculty members. In so doing, we highlight interdisciplinary activism, the importance of strong visual presence of feminist faculty activism on campus, as well as our challenges and dilemmas. As a call to arms, we hope this article inspires other faculty to recognize their power and to take incisive action on their respective campuses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research repeatedly shows that women are frequent targets of sexual harassment in public, ranging from catcalls to sexual assault. However, we know very little about the impacts of less obviously gendered rude behavior. Using nationally representative survey data from Australia ( N = 1621), we investigated gender differences in the experience of generic public incivilities such as tailgating, pushing in crowded spaces, and yelling or cursing. We employed a series of logistic regression models to assess the relationship between gender and stranger incivility and to adjust for key demographic and event attributes. Results demonstrated that women were significantly more likely to report recent experiences of public incivility than were men and that women were significantly more likely to report negative impacts on their emotional well-being, particularly when the rude stranger was a man. Findings also showed that women were significantly more likely than were men to report limiting their use of public places as a result of experiencing public incivility. Much like sexual harassment, generic forms of uncivil behavior exact a gender-specific tax on women's access to public places, compromising women's capacity to fully engage in the public sphere. Implications for research and policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances in partisan selective exposure research have provided compelling evidence for the distinction between selective approach and selective avoidance. Yet the questions of whether, how, and to what extent discrete emotions systematically shape either of these patterns has not been sufficiently addressed. This study explores the differential roles of fear, anger, and enthusiasm in selective approach to and selective avoidance of partisan news programs, focusing on partisan differences in regard to a person’s general approach versus avoidance tendencies to external stimuli as a possible moderating mechanism. A secondary analysis of the 2012 American National Election Studies data suggested that fear and anger both significantly increased proattitudinal news exposure, whereas only anger decreased counterattitudinal news exposure. In addition, Republicans exhibit these patterns to a greater extent than Democrats. Furthermore, enthusiasm significantly predicted exposure to proattitudinal news for both Republicans and Democrats, whereas Democrats were significantly more likely than Republicans to increase their counterattitudinal news exposure as a function of enthusiasm. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite the conventional images of the Belle Époque, the first fifteen years of the twentieth century were undermined by awareness that the foundations of civilized life were precarious. The article analyzes the fears and anxieties, and hopes and aspirations, of propertied classes in Italy, France, and Spain in the fifteen years preceding the Great War. The aims of the article are twofold. First it analyzes perceptions of fear during major strikes and daily life, relating them to those cultural factors (like religion and a preoccupation with private property) that contributed to shape and influence anxieties and uncertainness. Emotional experiences are examined in relation both to the political cultures that gave them significance and to the practices to which they gave rise and from which they also originated. Second, the article analyzes the "materiality" of emotions and the emotional characters, which are rooted in actions. Indeed, emotions act as a means of framing and reaching judgments on social events and may fuel organizational initiatives and even collective violent practices. Studying the interplay between emotions, political cultures, and practices in contexts of high-level political and social unrests, the article offers new insights into a broader comprehension of a crucial (though sometimes underestimated) period in European history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Fear/anxiety and anger/aggression greatly influence health, quality of life and social interactions. They are a huge burden to wellbeing, and personal and public economics. However, while much is known about the physiology and neuroanatomy of such emotions, little is known about their genetics - most importantly, why some individuals are more susceptible to pathology under stress. Results: We conducted genomewide association (GWA) mapping of breed stereotypes for many fear and aggression traits across several hundred dogs from diverse breeds. We confirmed those findings using GWA in a second cohort of partially overlapping breeds. Lastly, we used the validated loci to create a model that effectively predicted fear and aggression stereotypes in a third group of dog breeds that were not involved in the mapping studies. We found that i) known IGF1 and HMGA2 loci variants for small body size are associated with separation anxiety, touch-sensitivity, owner directed aggression and dog rivalry; and ii) two loci, between GNAT3 and CD36 on chr18, and near IGSF1 on chrX, are associated with several traits, including touch-sensitivity, non-social fear, and fear and aggression that are directed toward unfamiliar dogs and humans. All four genome loci are among the most highly evolutionarily-selected in dogs, and each of those was previously shown to be associated with morphological traits. We propose that the IGF1 and HMGA2 loci are candidates for identical variation being associated with both behavior and morphology. In contrast, we show that the GNAT3-CD36 locus has distinct variants for behavior and morphology. The chrX region is a special case due to its extensive linkage disequilibrium (LD). Our evidence strongly suggests that sociability (which we propose is associated with HS6ST2) and fear/ aggression are two distinct GWA loci within this LD block on chrX, but there is almost perfect LD between the peaks for fear/aggression and animal size. Conclusions: We have mapped many canine fear and aggression traits to single haplotypes at the GNAT3-CD36 and IGSF1 loci. CD36 is widely expressed, but areas of the amygdala and hypothalamus are among the brain regions with highest enrichment; and CD36-knockout mice are known to have significantly increased anxiety and aggression. Both of the other genes have very high tissue-specificity and are very abundantly expressed in brain regions that comprise the core anatomy of fear and aggression - the amygdala to hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. We propose that reduced-fear variants at these loci may have been involved in the domestication process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust in many government organizations is low, creating a challenging environment for communication during outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases, like Ebola. In a thematic analysis of 1,010 tweets and four Twitter chats during the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, we found that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasized organizational competence, extant protocol, and facts about transmission to manage public fear. We argue that an emphasis on certainty in a rapidly changing situation leaves organizations vulnerable to charges of unpreparedness or obfuscation. Our results also speak to the contested definition of engagement online, particularly during health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social factor plays an important role in dealing with posttraumatic stress disorder related to excessive physiological fear response and insufficient fear memory extinction of the brain. However, although social circumstances occurred not only during contextual retrieval but also during fear conditioning, most previous studies focused on the advantageous aspects of social buffering in fear retrieval period. To demonstrate the association between fear responses and fear memory from social stimuli during fear conditioning, pair exposed rats with conspecific as social buffering were subjected to a fear conditioning of passive avoidance test to evaluate memory function and freezing behavior. Whereas single exposed rats showed the significant increase of freezing behaviors and passive avoidance behaviors compared to control rats, pair exposed rats showed significant alleviation of the freezing behaviors and passive avoidance behaviors compared to single exposed rats. Furthermore, we determined a significant correlation between freezing and passive avoidance behavioral alteration in pair exposed rats. Taken together, we suggest that pair exposure with conspecific during fear conditioning helps to cope with both freezing response and fear memory systems and their reciprocal interaction has a crucial potential as a resource for the relief of unreasonable stress responses in posttraumatic stress disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fearful facial expressions are important social indicators of environmental threat. Among the various features of a fearful face, the eyes appear to be particularly important for recognizing and responding to these social cues. One way in which fearful faces facilitate observers' behavior is by automatically capturing attention. This is true for both consciously and nonconsciously processed fearful faces. Recent research suggests that consciously processed fearful eyes alone are sufficient to capture observers' attention. However, it is unknown as to whether or not nonconsciously processed, backward masked, fearful eyes are sufficient to facilitate spatial attention. To test this possibility, two dot-probe experiments with masked fearful eye stimuli were performed. In Experiment 1, we found that, relative to scrambled eyes, masked fearful eyes facilitate attentional orienting and delay attentional disengagement. In Experiment 2, we replicated this effect when comparing backward masked fearful to neutral eyes. Thus, the data suggest that nonconscious fearful eyes facilitate spatial attention through facilitated orienting and delayed disengagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is far less a position paper or a descriptive analysis than an attempt to illuminate the lines that connect commonly recognized realities of human life: unfamiliar others in the form of strangers, interpersonal feelings in the form of trust, and organized belief systems in the form of religion. Its epistemological and even ontological conclusion may be sketched as follows: where belief overtakes wonder, religion fails in its mission to enhance life. When fear overtakes wonder, individuals fail in the promise of their aliveness. In particular, when belief overtakes wonder, religion fails in the sense of constraining or even shutting the individual off from investigation and exploration of the unknown or unfamiliar, or from what is not sanctioned as proper. When fear overtakes simple curiosity and the desire to know, the individual fails in the sense of simply reacting, prejudging a situation or a person as threatening or dangerous in advance of actual experience. When belief and fear together take over, human experience is shackled and crippled. It remains ideologically tethered and affectively maimed. The effect of this tethering and maiming has moral consequences having to do with a recognition or non-recognition of the foundational common humanness of humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages some questions raised by recent work on civil society: What is missed by a rationalist reduction of politics, and why does it matter? How does the somatic dimension of citizenship open deliberation to social economies of power? From these questions, the article interrogates what agency is possible if power is inscribed within the affects that mobilize action and judgment- with particular attention to the work of William Connolly. Over the course of the article, it is argued that Connolly's politics of sensibility makes an ambivalent contribution to these problems. While critics charge that he undermines possibilities for associational agency, this article proposes a rather more productive contribution to the arts of coalition building. And yet, these resources must be pressed beyond recent trends in the literature if they are to do justice to the unruly movements of civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addressed the question of whether extinction in pairs would have a beneficial effect on extinction of fear conditioning. To that end, we established an experimental setting for extinction in which we trained animals to extinguish contextual fear memory in pairs. Taking advantage of the role of oxytocin (OT) in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) in the mediation of memory extinction and social interaction, we also sought to study its role in social interaction-induced effects on extinction. Our results clearly show that the social presence of another animal in the extinction context facilitates extinction, and that this facilitation is mediated through mPFC–OT. Our results suggest that social interaction may be a positive regulator of fear inhibition, implying that social interaction may be an easy, accessible therapeutic tool for the treatment of fear-associated disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bivalent Fear of Evaluation (BFOE) model of social anxiety proposes that fear of negative evaluation (FNE)andfear of positive evaluation (FPE) play distinct roles in social anxiety. Research is however lacking in terms of how FPE is related to perfectionism and how these constructs interact to predict social anxiety. Participants were 382 individuals from the general community and included an oversampling of individuals with social anxiety. Measures of FPE, FNE, perfectionism, and social anxiety were administered. Results were mostly consistent with the predictions made by the BFOE model and showed that accounting for confounding variables, FPE correlated negatively with high standards but positively with maladaptive perfectionism. FNE was also positively correlated with maladaptive perfectionism, but there was no significant relationship between FNE and high standards. Also consistent with BFOE model, both FNE and FPE significantly moderated the relationship between maladaptive perfectionism and social anxiety with the relationship strengthened at high levels of FPE and FNE. These findings provide additional support for the BFOE model and implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Most research on the ability to interpret expressions from the eyes has utilized static information. This research investigates whether the dynamic sequence of facial actions in the eye region influences the judgments of perceivers. Dynamic fear expressions involving the eye region and eyebrows were created which systematically differed in the sequential occurrence of facial actions. Participants rated the intensity of sequential fear expressions, either in addition to a simultaneous, full-blown expression (Experiment 1) or in combination with different levels of eye gaze (Experiment 2). The results showed that the degree of attributed emotion and the appraisal ratings differed as a function of the sequence of facial expressions of fear, with direct gaze resulting in stronger subjective responses. The findings challenge current notions surrounding the study of static facial displays from the eyes and suggest that emotion perception is a dynamic process shaped by the time course of the facial actions of an expression. Possible implications for the field of affective computing and clinical research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the impacts of continuing conflict on the everyday lives of people living in Lyari, one of the oldest areas of Karachi. It focuses on fear and insecurity as emotional practices that structure the spatial and social relations in the city. Using the narratives of young Baloch men who must negotiate the threat of violence at the hands of criminal gangs and state security forces within their area and rival political parties outside the area, the article highlights how fear and insecurity must be understood as being contextually situated, depending on one's social and geographical position within the city. The experiences of these young men demonstrate how emotions such as fear and insecurity are both produced by and reproduce spatial configurations of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is young people's participation in the Occupy protest movement that emerged in the early autumn of 2011. Its concern is with the emotional dimensions of this and in particular the significance of emotions to the reasoning of young people who came to commit significant time and energy to the movement. Its starting point is the critique of emotions as narrowly subjective, whereby the passions that events like Occupy arouse are treated as beyond the scope of human reason. The rightful rejection of this reductionist argument has given rise to an interest in understandings of the emotional content of social and political protest as normatively constituted, but this paper seeks a different perspective by arguing that the emotions of Occupy activists can be regarded as a reasonable force. It does so by discussing findings from long-term qualitative research with a Local Occupy movement somewhere in England and Wales. Using the arguments of social realists, the paper explores this data to examine why things matter sufficiently for young people to care about them and how the emotional force that this involves constitutes an indispensable source of reason in young activists' decisions to become involved in Local Occupy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Associations linking a fearful experience to a member of a social group other than one's own (out-group) are more resistant to change than corresponding associations to a member of one's own (in-group) (Olsson et al., 2005; Kubota et al., 2012), providing a possible link to discriminative behavior. Using a fear conditioning paradigm, we investigated the neural activity underlying aversive learning biases towards in-group (White) and out-group (Black) members, and their predictive value for discriminatory interactive behavior towards novel virtual members of the racial out-group (n = 20). Our results indicate that activity in brain regions previously linked to conditioned fear and perception of individuals belonging to the racial out-groups, or otherwise stigmatized groups, jointly contribute to the expression of race-based biases in learning and behavior. In particular, we found that the amygdala and anterior insula (AI) played key roles in differentiating between in-group and out-group faces both when the faces were paired with an aversive event (acquisition) and when no more shocks were administered (extinction). In addition, functional connectivity between the amygdala and the fusiform gyrus increased during perception of conditioned out-group faces. Moreover, we showed that brain activity in the fear-learning-bias network was related to participants' discriminatory interactions with novel out-group members on a later day. Our findings are the first to identify the neural mechanism of fear learning biases towards out-group members, and its relationship to interactive behavior. Our findings provide important clues towards understanding the mechanisms underlying biases between social groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Negative attitudes and explicit racism against Muslims are increasingly visible in public discourse throughout Europe. Right-wing populist parties have strengthened their positions by focusing on the ‘Islamic threat’ to the West. Concurrently, the Internet has facilitated a space where racist attitudes towards Muslims are easily disseminated into the public debate, fuelling animosity against European Muslims. This paper explores part of the online Islamophobic network and scrutinizes the discursive strategies deployed by three ‘prominent’ online actors. By combining social network analysis and critical discourse analysis, the study shows that Islamophobic web pages constitute a dynamic network with ties to different political and geographical milieus. They create a seemingly mainstream political position by framing racist standpoints as a defence of Western values and freedom of speech. The study also shows that Islamophobic discourse is strengthened by xenophobic currents within mass media, and by the legitimization of intellectuals and political actors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We use two unique Iraq data sets to show how fear and uncertainty served to motivate the self-fulfilling, neighborhood-specific forces that followed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Sectarian criminal violence by armed Shia and Sunni organizations created a situation of ethnic/religious cleansing that reconfigured much of Baghdad. The article focuses on the case of how one particularly violent group, the Mahdi Army, mobilized through the coercive entrepreneurship of Muqtada al-Sadr, used organized crime tactics of killing, torture, rape, kidnapping, harassment, threats, and forced displacement in a widespread and systematic attack against civilians that forced Sunni residents from their Baghdad neighborhoods. Ordinary Iraqis were victims of an amplified 'self-fulfilling prophecy of fear' that created the momentum for massive sectarian displacement in the battle for Baghdad. We demonstrate that there is a neighborhood specific effect of early postinvasion neighborhood fear net of intervening violence on displacement three years later, following the Al-Qaeda Samara Shrine attack, confirming an effect of a self-fulfilling prophecy of fear in the neighborhoods of Baghdad that compounded in a self-reinforcing way. The changed demography of Baghdad was effectively consolidated by the later surge of U.S. forces that left in place the territorial gains made by the Shia-led Mahdi Army at the expense of former Sunni residents. We conclude that this continues to matter because the resulting grievances have contributed to renewed violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review issues associated with the phenomenology, etiology, assessment, and treatment of specific phobias in children and adolescents and provide suggestions for future research and clinical practice. In doing so, we highlight the early case studies of Little Hans and Little Albert and the advances that have been made following the publication of these seminal cases. In recent years, we have witnessed a deeper understanding of the etiology of specific phobias and developed a rich array of evidence-based assessments and treatments with which to address specific phobias in youth. Although much has been accomplished in this area of inquiry, we also note that much remains to be done before we can advance more fully our understanding, assessment, and treatment of specific phobias in youth. It will be important for future work to build more firmly on these developments and to better determine the moderators and mediators of change with our evidence-based treatments and to more vigorously pursue their dissemination in real-word settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fear is a powerful motivator for the classic fight or flight response. Under extreme social and political circumstances, fear may lead people to emigrate from their land to protect themselves and their families. While ideology is related to differences in behavioral fear reactivity, little is known about how it moderates the effect of fear on flight intentions. In a large experimental study ( N = 243), we examined our hypothesis that this moderating effect is context-dependent, such that the context's relation to the ideology determines its influence. In ideologically-irrelevant contexts, because rightists (versus leftists) are assumed to be more behaviorally reactive to fear, their willingness to consider flight should be more affected. In ideologically-relevant intergroup contexts, however, rightist ideology provides clear reaction guidelines ruling out flight, and therefore fear should have a weaker effect on rightists' (versus leftists') flight tendencies. Our findings supported these predictions, and their significance is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here we are dedicated to the central problem of thinking about sadness and joy in scenarios of armed conflict, violence, war and pain. We want to show that the richness of life in general carries in itself the challenge of assessing, case by case, that which serves the vital expansion and duration of all life. We say here: we cannot forget the substantial contexts in which life expresses in order to bring the behavior of a practical ethical nature, judgments that will try to define in the range of joy and sadness. We affirm that the grounds for action, the actions themselves, the behavior that we assume from others, can be understood among those going to the meeting and favoring life and those that end, overwhelmed, censor, prohibit, limit and end up with it. In the first part, we characterize the general problem of armed conflict and violence in the expression "If there was time for sadness." Then, we characterize the concepts of power and sadness to formulate the central question of how we will live together with the recognition and traces of terror and pain. Finally, we propose a solution to this question in the thesis on collective experimentation and networking. This last part will be conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools should embrace shared use and Safe Routes to School (SRTS) initiatives to improve student health. Fear of liability, however, has made many schools reluctant to support these efforts despite their proven benefits. This paper discusses school administrators' concerns about liability and identifies four strategies to help manage their fear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A criticism is presented of the public service broadcaster the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC's) television program "Sherlock," created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat. An overview of the influence that early 21st century British social conditions had on "Sherlock," including in regard to the British television viewer's psychology, British mass surveillance and the fear of terrorism in country, resulting from the July, 7, 2005 terrorist bombings in London, England, is provided.

An essay is presented which discusses the role that the racial identity as white allegedly plays in the presumption of innocence in the U.S., often referencing the cases involving the accused white murderer of a black teenager George Zimmerman (in the case State of Florida v. George Zimmerman) and the convicted African American woman Marissa Alexander (in the case State of Florida v. Marissa Alexander). An overview of the role that racism and fear played in Zimmerman's defense is provided.

Background Cognitive models of Social Anxiety Disorder suggest that negative self-images maintain social fears despite repeated exposure to benign social situations. An accumulating body of evidence supports this notion, and preliminary data indicate that modifying self-imagery can potentially reduce fears of negative evaluation in socially anxious individuals. This systematic review aims to evaluate the existing research on the effect of self-imagery on symptoms and processes in social anxiety. Methods The following databases were searched: PsycInfo, Medline, PubMed, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials. Articles were limited to adult samples and English language papers that examined the effect of self-imagery on at least one measure related to social anxiety. Risk of bias and study results were reviewed for each study. Results In the 17 studies that were identified, negative self-imagery had a consistently adverse effect on anxiety, self and observer-rated performance appraisals, and negative thoughts for both socially anxious and non-clinical participants. Effects of negative self-imagery were generally not significantly greater for socially anxious participants. Conclusions Further research is warranted to determine the precise role of different types of self-imagery for both clinical and non-clinical individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]