Allison J. Ouimet

Sexual functioning and anxiety have a complex and differential relationship for young women and men. Sensitivity to cues of anxiety and interpretations of arousal sensations may represent the differentiation between "My heart is racing, so I must be scared" versus "My heart is racing, so I must be turned on". These interpretive differences may help explain why men and women show distinct associations between anxiety and sexual functioning. We examined whether the interpretations of arousal sensations were related to sexual functioning in women and men. Undergraduate, women and men (N = 909) completed measures assessing anxiety sensitivity, positive interpretations of arousal sensations, and sexual functioning. Structural equation modeling was used to examine whether anxiety sensitivity and positive beliefs about arousal sensations were related to dimensions of sexual functioning in women and men. In women, higher anxiety sensitivity correlated with lower sexual satisfaction, whereas higher positive beliefs about arousal sensations correlated with higher sexual desire. In men, higher anxiety sensitivity correlated with higher sexual arousal, erection, and orgasm, whereas higher positive beliefs about arousal sensations correlated with higher sexual desire. Findings support the importance of considering beliefs about arousal sensations when assessing and treating individuals with problems in sexual functioning.

Social anxiety research has primarily relied on explicit self-report measures, which are vulnerable to response biases. Implicit measures have been used to examine underlying mechanisms of social anxiety (e.g., automatic associations). However, debate remains about their validity and utility. Prior research suggests that individuals with social anxiety are slower to associate the self with social acceptance-related words. We investigated whether the Implicit Association Test (IAT), using rejection vs. acceptance and anxiety vs. calm words, predicts anxiety during a speech task beyond explicit measures. We also tested whether concurrent facial electromyography (EMG) activity adds validity evidence for the IAT. Undergraduate and community participants completed IATs while recording facial EMG, followed by a speech task. They rated social anxiety at baseline and before and after the speech. Contrary to hypotheses, participants with high social anxiety did not exhibit stronger negative implicit associations nor increased EMG corrugator activity. Corrugator activity did not distinguish between inconsistent and consistent IAT blocks in high social anxiety participants. Self-report measures significantly predicted anxiety during the speech task; the addition of IAT scores did not account for incremental variance beyond self-reports. Our findings add to the literature related to validity problems with the IAT when assessing anxiety.

Purpose: Intolerance of uncertainty (IU) is associated with poorer emotional wellbeing and worse prognosis of chronic physical health and pain conditions (CHPCs). Our current understanding of IU in CHPCs is siloed within the literatures on specific CHPCs. However, IU is consistently identified as a risk factor for anxiety and depressive disorders. In this exploratory study, we used a mixed methods design to better understand the role of IU and anxiety in people’s (n = 139) lived experiences of their CHPCs and how they respond to uncertainty across health and everyday contexts. Primary Results: Higher acceptance of illness and perceived social support were related to lower IU and anxiety among people with CHPCs. Higher IU and anxiety were also related to lower scores on many domains of quality of life. Our reflexive thematic analysis resulted in four primary themes: 1) distressing ambiguous contexts are not limited to health scenarios and require management in diverse ways; 2) interference of CHPCs affects multiple domains of life beyond physical health; 3) navigating uncertainty for a chronic period changes coping abilities and identity development; and 4) responsivity to uncertainty is a multifaceted cognitive-behavioural and emotionalphysiological response that hinders or promotes coping. Conclusions: IU significantly impacts the lives of those with CHPCs and holds potential as a transdiagnostic target for early prevention and intervention. By tailoring therapeutic approaches to acknowledge the importance of health-related cues while increasing tolerance of uncertainty, people with CHPCs will likely experience improved prognosis, wellbeing, and fulfillment. Keywords: intolerance of uncertainty, anxiety, chronic health, chronic pain, transdiagnostic, context, mixed-methods

In response to the growing need for cross-cultural perspectives on mental health, this study investigates and compares childhood trauma, rejection sensitivity, experiential avoidance, loneliness, and social anxiety in Canadian and Turkish general population samples to gain insights into potential cultural variations in mental health outcomes. The present study included 1,735 participants from the general population in Canada (n = 959; M_age = 20.82; 73.83% female) and Türkiye (n = 776; M_age = 25.01; 80.80% female). Data were collected using self-report measures. Zero-order correlations, two-way multivariate analysis of covariance and analysis of covariance, and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to test research questions. Our findings indicate positive associations among childhood trauma, social anxiety, rejection sensitivity, experiential avoidance, and loneliness in both samples. Notably, participants from Canada scored significantly higher on all these constructs compared to their Turkish counterparts. Furthermore, female participants scored higher on all main variables than males, except for physical abuse, where males reported higher scores. In the Canadian sample, younger age, female gender, childhood traumas, rejection sensitivity, experiential avoidance, and loneliness were significant predictors of social anxiety. Conversely, in the Turkish sample, younger age, emotional neglect, rejection sensitivity, experiential avoidance, and loneliness were significant predictors of social anxiety. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Introduction Despite decades of research on how people with social anxiety evaluate themselves and others, it remains unclear whether people who evaluate themselves negatively also evaluate others negatively. Findings from other-evaluation research are equivocal, perhaps attributable to methodology differences and inconsistent operationalization. Social-cognitive and cognitive-behavioural models suggest that negative self-evaluations may cause participants to subsequently evaluate a visibly anxious person negatively. We tested this hypothesis experimentally, using a video-recorded social interaction and novel false-feedback manipulation. Methods: 169 unselected participants completed baseline questionnaires and a 10-min impromptu conversation task with a confederate. We randomly assigned participants to receive positive, ambiguous, or negative false-feedback about their performance. Next, they evaluated their own performance and watched a recorded conversation between an anxious and confident speaker. Finally, they evaluated the anxious person’s performance. Results: Our manipulation was effective; participants in the negative-feedback condition rated themselves more negatively. However, no differences emerged between conditions on most cognitive and emotional outcomes. Discussion: Evaluating oneself negatively, on its own, may not lead people to evaluate a visibly anxious person in a recorded social interaction negatively in a single-session experiment within an unselected sample. Future studies should examine this relationship with a clinical sample across time and contexts.