A blog about human brains and behavior for students of psychology.
A type of therapy that is often recommended for social anxiety disorder is cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. In this type of therapy, people learn to challenge unhelpful thought patterns, create new behaviors, and respond to their emotions in more
How can parents help shy toddlers become more at ease in social situations? A new study suggests that a combination of warmth and gentle prompting to engage socially might be the answer. The study involved 55 toddlers between 21 and
The way we typically think about it, social anxiety involves a fear of being evaluated negatively by other people. Which is true. But an interesting line of research suggests that people with social anxiety might also fear being evaluated positively
Feelings of shyness can come with all kinds of thoughts. Worries, doubts, rumination. But a new study by researchers in Italy suggests it goes deeper than that: shyness might also have to do with how we think about thinking. Psychologists
In a time where we carry smartphones that provide a constant stream of information about our lives, it’s worth asking: what can you tell about someone’s mental health from their smartphone data? Obviously, their search history might tell you something.
What do we worry about when we worry? More often than not, the future. Ruminating about what tomorrow holds is a familiar activity for people with anxiety. A logical question, then, is whether teaching people techniques for taking a step
Touch can be a powerful means of communication, especially between parents and children. As the authors of a recent study explain it, “the sense of touch develops in utero and enables parent-child communication from the earliest moments of life.” Maybe
Is flouting social rules more forgivable if it’s done as a genuine accident than if it’s intentional? Depends who you ask, apparently. In particular, whether people have higher or lower levels of social anxiety seems to influence how they perceive
Do you ever play social situations over in your head, thinking about embarrassing moments or wishing you’d done things differently? Psychologists refer to this repetitive replaying of anxiety-provoking social situations as post-event processing. Everyone engages in post-event processing to some
A little liquid courage can take the edge off anxiety, but too much liquid courage can cause all sorts of problems. Self-medicating with the anxiety-reducing properties of alcohol has been put forward as one possible explanation for why people with
