Laughter as a social rejection cue: gelotophobia and transient cardiac responses to other persons' laughter and insult

Distinct physiological responses to social-evaluative stress in patients with major depressive disorder reporting a history of peer victimization

Peer victimization is a risk factor for the development of major depressive disorders, but little is known about the mechanisms. This study examined whether peer victimization alters physiological and affective responses to potentially threatening social stimuli. For this purpose, reactions to socially evaluative stimuli of depressive patients and healthy controls with varying histories of peer victimization were compared. In a social conditioning task, we studied heart rate responses to unconditioned socially negative and neutral evaluative video statements, followed by the heart rate reactions to conditioned stimuli, i.e. still images of the faces of the same actors. Diagnosis of depression and peer victimization were both associated with a more pronounced heart rate deceleration in response to unconditioned stimuli, irrespective of valence. The effect of peer victimization was stronger in depressive patients than in healthy controls. However, heart rate responses to the CSs were not related to depression or peer victimization. The results indicate a hypervigilant processing of social stimuli in depressive patients reporting histories of peer victimization. This distinct processing may be associated with inappropriate behavioral and emotional responses to social challenges, putting individuals at risk for depressive symptoms.

Physical and social trauma: Towards an integrative transdiagnostic perspective on psychological trauma that involves threats to status and belonging

Current theories of psychological trauma assume that posttraumatic symptoms originate from stress reactions caused by extremely adverse life experiences. Since the diagnosis of PTSD is restricted to events that involve threats to the physical or sexual integrity of a person, such as accidents and physical and sexual violence, these theories are not well suited to explain the psychopathological consequences of severe violations of one's social integrity, such as emotional abuse and bullying. However, it is evident that social threats contribute to a broad range of mental disorders and increase symptom severity in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder. The aim of the Physical and Social Trauma (PAST) framework is to extend current memory theories of psychological trauma to incorporate threats to a person's social integrity. Within this perspective, the harmful effects of events that involve social threats result from violations of core social motives such as the need for status and belonging that bring about intense affective reactions, including despair and defeat. Within associative threat structures, these emotions are tied to the stimulus characteristics of the experiences and can be re-activated in social situations. The resulting psychopathology transcends PTSD criteria and other current classifications and suggests a transdiagnostic perspective of psychological trauma. Implications for treatment and further directions for research are discussed.

The Role of Contextual Information in Classifying Spontaneous Social Laughter

Laughter is a ubiquitous and important social signal, but its nature is yet to be fully explored. One of the open empirical questions is about the role of context in the interpretation of laughter. Can laughs presented on their own convey specific feelings and social motives? How influential is social context when a person tries to understand the meaning of a laugh? Here we test the extent to which the classification of laughs produced in different situations is guided by knowing the context within which these laughs were produced. In the current study, stimuli were spontaneous laughs recorded in social situations engineered to elicit amusement, embarrassment, and schadenfreude. In a between-subjects design, participants classified these laughs being assigned to one of the four experimental conditions: audio only, audio-visual, side-by-side videos of two interactants, and side-by-side videos accompanied by a brief vignette. Participants’ task was to label each laugh as an instance of amusement, embarrassment, or schadenfreude laugh, or “other.” Laughs produced in situations inducing embarrassment were classified more accurately than laughs produced in other situations. Most importantly, eliminating information about the social settings in which laughs were produced decreased participants’ classification accuracy such that accuracy was no better than chance in the experimental conditions providing minimal contextual information. Our findings demonstrate the importance of context in the interpretation of laughter and highlight the complexity of experimental investigations of schadenfreude displays.

Effects of Touchscreen Media Use on Toddlers' Sleep: Insights from Longtime ECG Monitoring

Wearable biomedical sensor technology enables reliable monitoring of physiological data, even in very young children. The purpose of the present study was to develop algorithms for gaining valid physiological indicators of sleep quality in toddlers, using data from an undisturbing and easy-to-use wearable device. The study further reports the application of this technique to the investigation of potential impacts of early touchscreen media use. Toddlers' touchscreen media use is of strong interest for parents, educators, and researchers. Mostly, negative effects of media use are assumed, among them, disturbances of sleep and impairments of learning and development. In 55 toddlers (32 girls, 23 boys; 27.4 ± 4.9 months; range: 16-37 months), ECG monitoring was conducted for a period of 30 (±3) h. Parents were asked about their children's touchscreen media use and they rated their children's sleep quality. The use of touchscreen media predicted the physiologically determined quality of sleep but not parent-reported sleep quality (such as sleep onset latency). Greater heart rate differences between restless sleep phases and restful sleep indicated poorer nighttime recovery in children with more frequent use of touchscreen media. The study demonstrates that the expert analysis of the ECG during sleep is a potent tool for the estimation of sleep quality in toddlers.

The Paradox of Fiction Revisited-Improvised Fictional and Real-Life Social Rejections Evoke Associated and Relatively Similar Psychophysiological Responses

Theatre-based practices, such as improvisation, are frequently applied to simulate everyday social interactions. Although the improvisational context is acknowledged as fictional, realistic emotions may emerge, a phenomenon labelled the 'paradox of fiction'. This study investigated how manipulating the context (real-life versus fictional) modulates psychophysiological reactivity to social rejection during dyadic interactions. We measured psychophysiological responses elicited during real-life (interview) and fictional (improvisation exercises) social rejections. We analysed the heart rate (HR), skin conductance, facial muscle activity, and electrocortical activity (electroencephalographic (EEG) alpha asymmetry) of student teachers (N = 39) during various social rejections (devaluing, interrupting, nonverbal rejection). All social rejections evoked negative EEG alpha asymmetry, a measure reflecting behavioural withdrawal motivation. Psychophysiological responses during real-life and fictional rejections correlated, and rejection type modified the responses. When comparing responses across all rejection types, facial muscle activity and EEG alpha asymmetry did not differ between real-life and fictional rejections, whereas HR decelerated and skin conductance increased during fictional rejections. These findings demonstrate that regardless of cognitive awareness of fictionality, relatively subtle social rejections elicited psychophysiological reactivity indicating emotional arousal and negative valence. These findings provide novel, biological evidence for the application of theatre-based improvisation to studying experientially everyday social encounters.

The Fear of Being Laughed at, Social Anxiety, and Paranoid Ideation: A Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis of Multitrait-Multimethod Data

The GELOPH-15 is a self-report measure that assesses individual differences in the fear of being laughed at (i.e., gelotophobia), a relatively understudied but important trait that is closely related to social anxiety. Using a multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) approach, the convergent and discriminant validity of the GELOPH-15 scale was examined based on 217 self- and 651 peer ratings (of three close acquaintances per target) of the traits gelotophobia, social anxiety, and paranoid ideation. Participants completed the Spanish versions of the GELOPH-15, the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale, and the Paranoia Scale. Applying MTMM models of multilevel confirmatory factor analyses (ML-CFA-MTMM) revealed relatively high associations between the self- and peer ratings, supporting the convergent validity of the GELOPH-15. Discriminant validity analyses confirmed the expected relationship patterns of gelotophobia with social anxiety and paranoid ideation (i.e., strong, but not perfect associations). The results showed that the ML-CFA-MTMM models might be a useful tool for analyzing the convergent and discriminant validity based on self- and peer ratings.

The Impacts of the Presence of an Unfamiliar Dog on Emerging Adults' Physiological and Behavioral Responses Following Social Exclusion

Research indicates that non-human attachment figures may mitigate the negative consequences of social exclusion. In the current experiment, we examined how the presence of an unfamiliar companion dog in the laboratory effects physiological and behavioral reactions in female emerging adults after social exclusion compared to inclusion. Results revealed the beneficial effects of the dog: Socially excluded participants in the company of a dog showed less aggressive behavior in response to the hot sauce paradigm compared to excluded participants in the control condition. Furthermore, cardiac responses indicated mitigated perception of threat in a subsequent insult episode when a dog was present. The presence of a dog did not impact the most instantaneous, "reflexive" response to the social exclusion as revealed by characteristic cardiac changes. Together, the findings indicate that the presence of a companion dog takes effect in a later, reflective period following a social exclusion experience, which implicates relevant social elaboration and appraisal processes.

Investigating Reflexive Responses to Explicit and Implicit Forms of Social Exclusion Using Immersive Virtual Environment Technology

Humans are strongly affected by social exclusion, a multifaceted and complex phenomenon of social life. However, individuals tend to respond differently depending on a multitude of individual and contextual factors. Firstly, with a view to increasing the ecological validity and experimental control of an exclusion manipulation in the laboratory setting, we made use of immersive virtual environment technology (IVET; an Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset) to create a new exclusion paradigm. Secondly, given that a recent meta-analytic report on reflexive responses (i.e., affect and physiology) to manipulations of exclusion in the laboratory setting cites inconsistencies across findings (Blackhart et al., 2009), we focused on the form of exclusion manipulated to illustrate how this factor may help to explain the divergences in responses. We thus investigated how explicit and implicit forms of social exclusion may have a differential impact on self-reported affect, as well as on electrodermal and cardiovascular activity. Results from this laboratory study conducted with a varied sample of the local population made salient the affordances of IVET as a tool in exclusion research. They also helped to reconcile the conflicting findings in the literature relating to differences in the level of negative affect generated and shed light on physiological arousal in the wake of being excluded in different ways.

Are you laughing at me? Neural correlates of social intent attribution to auditory and visual laughter

Laughter is a multifaceted signal, which can convey social acceptance facilitating social bonding as well as social rejection inflicting social pain. In the current study, we addressed the neural correlates of social intent attribution to auditory or visual laughter within an fMRI study to identify brain areas showing linear increases of activation with social intent ratings. Negative social intent attributions were associated with activation increases within the medial prefrontal cortex/anterior cingulate cortex (mPFC/ACC). Interestingly, negative social intent attributions of auditory laughter were represented more rostral than visual laughter within this area. Our findings corroborate the role of the mPFC/ACC as key node for processing “social pain” with distinct modality‐specific subregions. Other brain areas that showed an increase of activation included bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and right superior/middle temporal gyrus (STG/MTG) for visually presented laughter and bilateral STG for auditory presented laughter with no overlap across modalities. Similarly, positive social intent attributions were linked to hemodynamic responses within the right inferior parietal lobe and right middle frontal gyrus, but there was no overlap of activity for visual and auditory laughter. Our findings demonstrate that social intent attribution to auditory and visual laughter is located in neighboring, but spatially distinct neural structures.

Impact of humor-related communication elements in natural dyadic interactions on interpersonal physiological synchrony

Evidence suggests that in dyadic conversations some alignment occurs at the physiological level, but relatively little is known about the conditions that may facilitate physiological synchrony of two interlocutors. In the present interdisciplinary study, the impact of specific linguistic features of ongoing dialogues-the use of humor-related communication elements-was examined in 24 male dyads who were meeting for the first time. Heart rate synchrony was quantified using phase synchronization, which reflects the degree of moment-to-moment adjustments that occur between the two persons of a dyad. Comical hypotheticals and verbal amplifiers were identified and quantified using cognitive-linguistic methods of corpus analysis. Additionally, smiles following these communication elements were identified using the Facial Action Coding System. The data showed that the heart rate time series of the two interlocutors were to some extent synchronized in phase, and that the magnitude of this synchronization exceeded what had to be expected by chance. The strength of heart rate synchrony in a dyad was the higher the more comical hypotheticals were produced, independently from how much the two conversation partners were in sum talking to each other. A similar observation was made for verbal amplifiers, but their effect depended on whether they were perceived (and acknowledged by a smile) as humorous. The findings are in line with the more general notion that physiological synchrony may be enhanced by shared experience and suggest that the use of (reciprocated) humor may speed up the building of rapport among communication partners.

Laughter as a social rejection cue: Influence of prior explicit experience of social rejection on cardiac signs of "freezing"

The study aimed at investigating the immediate cardiac effect of the sudden perception of other people's laughter after experimentally manipulating healthy participants' proneness to experience laughter as a cue of social threat. We expected that participants would show cardiac signs of freezing (i.e., sustained heart rate deceleration immediately after perception of the laughter) after prior social rejection but not or less so after prior acceptance, due to an increased bias to perceive the ambiguous social signal as a cue of social threat and rejection after rejection had been primed. Contrary to expectations, the perception of other people's laughter elicited a decelerative (freezing) response regardless of whether it was preceded by the experience of social rejection or acceptance. The response was prolonged in participants who had been accepted beforehand compared to those who had been rejected. The findings indicate that, given a relevant social context, other people's laughter can be a powerful cue of social threat and rejection also in healthy individuals. Prolonged heart rate deceleration after an ambiguous social signal may facilitate the processing of significant social information in the socially threatening situation. The study adds to the literature rendering the course of the immediate transient heart rate response a useful tool in social rejection research. Additionally, the findings suggested that in some cases the further progress of transient heart rate changes in more extended time-windows (about 30 s) may provide additional relevant information about the processing of social cues.

Extraversion Is a Mediator of Gelotophobia: A Study of Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Big Five

Previous research has shown that individuals with autism are frequently mocked in their childhood and are consequently more anxious about being ridiculed. Research has also shown that autistic individuals have a higher level of gelotophobia (fear of being laughed at) compared to typically developed individuals. However, recent studies have also found that gelotophobia is strongly related to personality, which suggests that personality is a factor that helps to create a higher level of gelotophobia in autistic individuals. To investigate whether this is the case, we recruited 279 Taiwanese high school students, 123 with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 156 typically developed students as a control group. Self-reporting questionnaires were used to gather data on the Big Five personality traits and on the gelotophobia-related traits of gelotophobia, gelotophilia, and katagelasticism. The results were analyzed and the two groups were compared for differences in gelotophobia and personality. The ASD group was found to have a higher level of gelotophobia than the typically developed group, but lower levels of gelotophilia and katagelasticism. Additionally, the ASD group was found to have lower levels of extraversion and agreeableness than the typically developed group, but no significant difference was found between the two groups in terms of conscientiousness, openness, and emotional stability. We then investigated the possible correlations between gelotophobia-related traits and the Big Five, and consequently the mediation effect of the Big Five on gelotophobia. The results show, firstly, that extraversion rather than ASD is a direct factor in gelotophobia. Secondly, the level of gelotophilia was partly influenced by autism but also to a certain extent by the level of extraversion. Lastly, the results indicate that autism and the level of agreeableness are in conflict when predicting the level of katagelasticism.

Social Context Disambiguates the Interpretation of Laughter

Despite being a pan-cultural phenomenon, laughter is arguably the least understood behaviour deployed in social interaction. As well as being a response to humour, it has other important functions including promoting social affiliation, developing cooperation and regulating competitive behaviours. This multi-functional feature of laughter marks it as an adaptive behaviour central to facilitating social cohesion. However, it is not clear how laughter achieves this social cohesion. We consider two approaches to understanding how laughter facilitates social cohesion - the 'representational' approach and the 'affect-induction' approach. The representational approach suggests that laughter conveys information about the expresser's emotional state, and the listener decodes this information to gain knowledge about the laugher's felt state. The affect-induction approach views laughter as a tool to influence the affective state of listeners. We describe a modified version of the affect-induction approach, in which laughter is combined with additional factors - including social context, verbal information, other social signals and knowledge of the listener's emotional state - to influence an interaction partner. This view asserts that laughter by itself is ambiguous: the same laughter may induce positive or negative affect in a listener, with the outcome determined by the combination of these additional factors. Here we describe two experiments exploring which of these approaches accurately describes laughter. Participants judged the genuineness of audio-video recordings of social interactions containing laughter. Unknown to the participants the recordings contained either the original laughter or replacement laughter from a different part of the interaction. When replacement laughter was matched for intensity, genuineness judgements were similar to judgements of the original unmodified recordings. When replacement laughter was not matched for intensity, genuineness judgements were generally significantly lower. These results support the affect-induction view of laughter by suggesting that laughter is inherently underdetermined and ambiguous, and that its interpretation is determined by the context in which it occurs.

The fear of being laughed at as additional diagnostic criterion in social anxiety disorder and avoidant personality disorder?

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is the most common anxiety disorder and has considerable negative impact on social functioning, quality of life, and career progression of those affected. Gelotophobia (the fear of being laughed at) shares many similarities and has therefore been proposed as a subtype of SAD. This hypothesis has, however, never been tested in a clinical sample. Thus, the relationship between gelotophobia, SAD and avoidant personality disorder (APD) was investigated by examining a sample of 133 participants (64 psychiatric patients and 69 healthy controls matched for age and sex) using the Structured Clinical Interview for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edition) and an established rating instrument for gelotophobia (GELOPH<15>). As expected, gelotophobia scores and the number of gelotophobic individuals were significantly higher among patients with SAD (n = 22) and APD (n = 12) compared to healthy controls and other psychiatric patients. Furthermore, gelotophobia scores were highest in patients suffering from both SAD and APD. In fact, all patients suffering from both disorders were also suffering from gelotophobia. As explained in the discussion, the observed data did not suggest that gelotophobia is a subtype of SAD. The findings rather imply that the fear of being laughed at is a symptom characteristic for both SAD and APD. Based on that, gelotophobia may prove to be a valuable additional diagnostic criterion for SAD and APD and the present results also contribute to the ongoing debate on the relationship between SAD and APD.

Eye Contact and Fear of Being Laughed at in a Gaze Discrimination Task

Current approaches conceptualize gelotophobia as a personality trait characterized by a disproportionate fear of being laughed at by others. Consistently with this perspective, gelotophobes are also described as neurotic and introverted and as having a paranoid tendency to anticipate derision and mockery situations. Although research on gelotophobia has significantly progressed over the past two decades, no evidence exists concerning the potential effects of gelotophobia in reaction to eye contact. Previous research has pointed to difficulties in discriminating gaze direction as the basis of possible misinterpretations of others' intentions or mental states. The aim of the present research was to examine whether gelotophobia predisposition modulates the effects of eye contact (i.e., gaze discrimination) when processing faces portraying several emotional expressions. In two different experiments, participants performed an experimental gaze discrimination task in which they responded, as quickly and accurately as possible, to the eyes' directions on faces displaying either a happy, angry, fear, neutral, or sad emotional expression. In particular, we expected trait-gelotophobia to modulate the eye contact effect, showing specific group differences in the happiness condition. The results of Study 1 (N = 40) indicated that gelotophobes made more errors than non-gelotophobes did in the gaze discrimination task. In contrast to our initial hypothesis, the happiness expression did not have any special role in the observed differences between individuals with high vs. low trait-gelotophobia. In Study 2 (N = 40), we replicated the pattern of data concerning gaze discrimination ability, even after controlling for individuals' scores on social anxiety. Furthermore, in our second experiment, we found that gelotophobes did not exhibit any problem with identifying others' emotions, or a general incorrect attribution of affective features, such as valence, intensity, or arousal. Therefore, this bias in processing gaze might be related to the global processes of social cognition. Further research is needed to explore how eye contact relates to the fear of being laughed at.

Evaluation of a Picture-Based Test for the Assessment of Gelotophobia

This study examines whether coding open answers in a picture-based test, as to the extent they reflect the fear of being laughed at (i.e., gelotophobia), demonstrates sufficient validity to construct a semi-projective test for the assessment of gelotophobia. Previous findings indicate that cartoon stimuli depicting laughter situations (i.e., in the pilot version of the Picture-Geloph; Ruch et al., 2009) on average elicit fear-typical responses in gelotophobes stronger than in non-gelotophobes. The present study aims to (a) develop a standardized scoring procedure based on a coding scheme, and (b) examine the properties of the pilot version of the Picture-Geloph in order to select the most acceptable items for a standard form of the test. For Study 1, a sample of N = 126 adults, with scores evenly distributed across the gelotophobia spectrum, completed the pilot version of the Picture-Geloph by noting down what they assumed the protagonist in each of 20 cartoons would say or think. Furthermore, participants answered the GELOPH<15> (Ruch and Proyer, 2008), the established questionnaire for the subjective assessment of the fear of being laughed at. Agreement between two independent raters indicated that the developed coding scheme allows for objective and reliable scoring of the Picture-Geloph (mean of intraclass correlations = 0.66). Nine items met the criteria employed to identify the psychometrically most reliable and valid items. These items were unidimensional and internally consistent (Cronbach's alpha = 0.78). The total score of this selection (i.e., the Picture-Geloph<9>) discriminated significantly between non-fearful, slightly, markedly, and extremely fearful individuals; furthermore, it correlated sufficiently high (r = 0.66; r_c = 0.79 when corrected for reliability of both measures) with the GELOPH<15>. Cronbach's alpha (0.73) was largely comparable whereas the estimate of convergent validity was found to be lower in one (r = 0.50; r_c = 0.61; N = 103) of the two samples in Study 2. Combining all three samples (N = 313) yielded a linear relationship between the self-report and the Picture-Geloph. With the Picture-Geloph<9> and the developed coding scheme, an unobtrusive and valid alternative instrument for the assessment of gelotophobia is provided. Possible applications are discussed.

Parasympathetic cardio-regulation during social interactions in individuals with obesity-The influence of negative body image

Individuals with obesity in Western societies often face weight-related stigmatization and social exclusion. Recurrent exposure to prejudice and negative social feedback alters one's behavior in future social interactions. In this study, we aimed to investigate autonomic nervous system and affective responses to social interactions in individuals with obesity. Women and men with (n = 56) and without (n = 56) obesity participated in episodes of social inclusion and social exclusion using a virtual ball-tossing game. During the experiment, heart rate was measured and parasympathetic activity (overall high-frequency power and event-related cardiac slowing) was analyzed. Our results show that in novel social interactions, women with obesity, relative to the other groups, exhibited the strongest increase in parasympathetic activity. Furthermore, parasympathetic activity was related to a more negative body image in individuals with obesity, but not in lean individuals. Additionally, women with obesity reported a stronger decrease in mood after social exclusion than did the other participants. Our results demonstrate influences of objective and subjective bodily characteristics on parasympathetic cardio-regulation during social interactions. In particular, they show behavioral and physiological alterations during social interactions in women with obesity.

Are you looking my way? Ostracism widens the cone of gaze

Ostracized individuals demonstrate an increased need for belonging. To satisfy this need, they search for signals of inclusion, one of which may be another person's gaze directed at oneself. We tested if ostracized, compared to included, individuals judge a greater degree of averted gaze as still being direct. This range of gaze angles still viewed as direct has been dubbed “the cone of (direct) gaze”. In the current research, ostracized and included participants viewed friendly-looking face stimuli with direct or slightly averted gaze (0°, 2°, 4°, 6°, and 8° to the left and to the right) and judged whether stimulus persons were looking at them or not. Ostracized individuals demonstrated a wider gaze cone than included individuals.

Assessing Dispositions Toward Ridicule and Laughter in the Workplace: Adapting and Validating the PhoPhiKat-9 Questionnaire

The current paper addresses the measurement of three dispositions toward ridicule and laughter; i.e., gelotophobia (the fear of being laughed at), gelotophilia (the joy of being laughed at), and katagelasticism (the joy of laughing at others). These traits explain inter-individual differences in responses to humor, laughter, and social situations related to humorous encounters. First, an ultra-short form of the PhoPhiKat-45 (Ruch and Proyer, 2009) was adapted in two independent samples (Construction Sample N = 157; Replication Sample N = 1,774). Second, we tested the validity of the PhoPhiKat-9 in two further independent samples. Results showed that the psychometric properties of the ultra-short form were acceptable and the proposed factor structure could be replicated. In Validation Sample 1 (N = 246), we investigated the relation of the three traits to responses in a ridicule and teasing scenario questionnaire. The results replicated findings from earlier studies by showing that gelotophobes assigned the same emotions to friendly teasing and malicious ridicule (predominantly low joy, high fear, and shame). Gelotophilia was mainly predicted by relating joy to both, teasing and ridicule scenarios, while katagelasticism was predicted by assigning joy and contempt to ridicule scenarios. In Validation Sample 2 (N = 1,248), we investigated whether the fear of being laughed at is a vulnerability at the workplace: If friendly teasing and laughter of co-workers, superiors, or customers are misperceived as being malicious, individuals may feel less satisfied and more stressed. The results from a representative sample of Swiss employees showed that individuals with a fear of being laughed at are generally less satisfied with life and work and experience more work stress. Moreover, gelotophilia went along with positive evaluations of one's life and work, while katagelasticism was negatively related to work satisfaction and positively related to work stress. In order to establish good work practices and build procedures against workplace bullying, one needs to consider that individual differences impact on a person's perception of being bullied and assessing the three dispositions may give important insights into team processes.

The fear of other persons' laughter: Poor neuronal protection against social signals of anger and aggression

The fear of other persons' laughter (gelotophobia) occurs in the context of several psychiatric conditions, particularly in the schizophrenia spectrum and social phobia. It entails severe personal and inter-personal problems including heightened aggression and possibly violence. Individuals with gelotophobia (n=30; 24 with social phobia or Cluster A diagnosis) and matched symptom-free controls (n=30) were drawn from a large screening sample (n=1440). EEG coherences were recorded during the confrontation with other people's affect expressions, to investigate the brain's modulatory control over the emotionally laden perceptual input. Gelotophobia was associated with more loose functional coupling of prefrontal and posterior cortex during the processing of expressions of anger and aggression, thus leaving the individual relatively unprotected from becoming affected by these social signals. The brain's response to social signals of anger/aggression and the accompanied heightened permeability for this kind of information explains the particular sensitivity to actual or supposed malicious aspects of laughter (and possibly of other ambiguous social signals) in individuals with gelotophobia, which represents the core feature of the condition. Heightened perception of stimuli that could be perceived as offensive, which is inherent in several psychiatric conditions, may be particularly evident in the fear of other persons' laughter.

Cardiac and electro-cortical concomitants of social feedback processing in women

This study provides a joint analysis of the cardiac and electro-cortical-early and late P3 and feedback-related negativity (FRN)-responses to social acceptance and rejection feedback. Twenty-five female participants performed on a social- and age-judgment control task, in which they received feedback with respect to their liking and age judgments, respectively. Consistent with previous reports, results revealed transient cardiac slowing to be selectively prolonged to unexpected social rejection feedback. Late P3 amplitude was more pronounced to unexpected relative to expected feedback. Both early and late P3 amplitudes were shown to be context dependent, in that they were more pronounced to social as compared with non-social feedback. FRN amplitudes were more pronounced to unexpected relative to expected feedback, irrespective of context and feedback valence. This pattern of findings indicates that social acceptance and rejection feedback have widespread effects on bodily state and brain function, which are modulated by prior expectancies.