{"title":"Anxiety and Mentalizing: Uncertainty as a Driver of Egocentrism","authors":"A. D. R. Surtees, Henry Briscoe, Andrew R. Todd","doi":"10.1177/09637214231217314","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Emotions shape how people understand and interact with others. Here, we review evidence on the relationship between anxiety—a future-oriented emotion characterized by negative valence, high arousal, and uncertainty—and mentalizing—the ascription of mental content to other agents. We examine three aspects of this relationship: how people with anxiety disorders perform on mentalizing tasks relative to controls; how situational anxiety alters mentalizing performance; and how autistic people, who experience the impacts of mentalizing differences, are at high risk of anxiety. We propose a bidirectional model for understanding how short-term and longer term anxiety are related to mentalizing. Key to this relationship is the aversive experience of uncertainty and the motivations that result from it.","PeriodicalId":10802,"journal":{"name":"Current Directions in Psychological Science","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Current Directions in Psychological Science","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214231217314","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Emotions shape how people understand and interact with others. Here, we review evidence on the relationship between anxiety—a future-oriented emotion characterized by negative valence, high arousal, and uncertainty—and mentalizing—the ascription of mental content to other agents. We examine three aspects of this relationship: how people with anxiety disorders perform on mentalizing tasks relative to controls; how situational anxiety alters mentalizing performance; and how autistic people, who experience the impacts of mentalizing differences, are at high risk of anxiety. We propose a bidirectional model for understanding how short-term and longer term anxiety are related to mentalizing. Key to this relationship is the aversive experience of uncertainty and the motivations that result from it.
期刊介绍:
Current Directions in Psychological Science publishes reviews by leading experts covering all of scientific psychology and its applications. Each issue of Current Directions features a diverse mix of reports on various topics such as language, memory and cognition, development, the neural basis of behavior and emotions, various aspects of psychopathology, and theory of mind. These articles allow readers to stay apprised of important developments across subfields beyond their areas of expertise and bodies of research they might not otherwise be aware of. The articles in Current Directions are also written to be accessible to non-experts, making them ideally suited for use in the classroom as teaching supplements.