Mental Imagery and Social Pain in Adolescents—Analysis of Imagery Characteristics and Perspective—A Pilot Study

Background: Mental imagery (MI) may play a key role in the development of various mental disorders in adolescents. Adolescence is known to be a fragile life period, in which acceptance by one’s favored peer group is extremely important, and social rejection is particularly painful. This is the first pilot study investigating MI and its relationship to social pain (SP). Method: A sample of 80 adolescents (14–20 years; 75.3% female) completed a web-based quasi-experimental design about the contents and characteristics of their spontaneous positive and negative MI and associated emotions, and were asked to complete the Social Pain Questionnaire, the Becks Depression Inventory and the Social Phobia Inventory. Results: A higher score of SP was significantly associated with increased fear, sadness, and feelings of guilt, and less control over negative MI. Characteristics of negative MI were more precisely predicted by SP scores than depression- and social anxiety scores. Adolescents with higher SP-scores more often reported negative images including social situations and were more likely to perceive negative images in a combination of field-and observer perspectives than adolescents with lower SP scores. Conclusion: SP-sensitivity seems to be linked to unique characteristics of negative MI, which reveals the strong emotional impact of social exclusion in youths. The results do not allow causal conclusions to be drawn, but raise questions about previous studies comparing each imagery perspective individually.

Women of Color Leveraging Community Cultural Wealth to Persist in Computing and Tech Graduate Education: A Qualitative Meta-Synthesis

This paper synthesizes 20 years (1999–2019) of empirical research on women of color (WOC) in computing and tech graduate education. Using complementary theoretical frameworks of social pain and community cultural wealth (CCW), we identify factors in the research literature that affect WOC’s experiences, participation, success, and persistence. This qualitative meta-synthesis employed systematic literature search and selection methods, a hybrid approach to coding and thematic analysis. Findings include the ways in which social pain from isolation, exclusion, and hostility from peers and faculty negatively affected WOC’s experiences in their graduate programs. Often, WOC’s motivation to persist and succeed in computing came from key social actors, such as mentors and families, and from individual and social strategies, such as seeking counterspaces, that leveraged their CCW. This meta-synthesis contributes to the knowledge base about the mechanisms that support and hinder the persistence of WOC in computing graduate programs and provides recommendations for institutions and for further research.

Race, social pain minimization, and mental health

People often believe Black individuals experience less social pain and require less social support to cope with distress than White individuals (e.g., Deska, Kunstman, Lloyd, et al., 2020). However, researchers have not tested whether biases in third-person pain judgments translate to first-person experiences with social pain minimization. For example, do Black individuals feel their social pain is underrecognized to a greater extent than White individuals? The current work tested whether Black individuals felt their social pain was minimized more than White individuals and if the experience of social pain minimization was related to worse mental health and greater life stress. Data from two cross-sectional, correlational studies provide initial support for these predictions ( Ntotal = 1,501). Black participants felt their social pain was minimized more than White participants and this race difference in social pain minimization was associated with worse mental health and greater life stress. These results suggest that Black individuals feel their pain is underrecognized and this experience of social pain minimization is related to worse mental health outcomes.

Social Inclusion and Exclusion: How Evolution Changes our Relational and Social Brain

Belonging to social groups is an important need for human beings and social exclusion has a significant psychological impact on individual wellbeing. Social neuroscience has clarified the similarity of the neuronal substrate between physical pain and social pain during the experience of social exclusion. Pain is the oldest signal that something is wrong for our brain, and the anticipation of pain motivates a move away from perceived dangerous or noxious stimuli. The Evolutionary Theory of Motivation (ETM) considered group affiliation as an adaptive goal that supports the individual\'s adaptation to the environment; however, invalidating experiences may induce avoidance of its pursuit. In this perspective, social exclusion could thus be considered as the result of failures at one or more levels of the human motivational systems. This chapter attempts to understand the neuroscience findings on social exclusion in this theoretical framework.