Interpreting Social Change in America

Interpreting Ambiguous Social Situations in Social Anxiety: Application of Computerized Task Measuring Interpretation Bias

Background and Aims: The interpretation bias which is an important factor in the pathology of social anxiety disorder, has been recently considered in therapeutic approaches. Given the importance of interpretation bias in the treatment of social anxiety, and despite the ambiguity in the relationship between social anxiety and interpretation bias, we compared the interpretation bias in individua...

Social Policy in Latin America

This project was conceived more as a collaborative study than as comparative research in the strict sense. The emphasis was on national studies, not on comparison among countries. Given the exploratory nature of the research, each national study had great freedom to define, conceptually and empirically, the "field" of social policy, thus acknowledging the complexity and ubiquity of the concept ...

Interpreting ambiguous social cues in unpredictable contexts.

Unpredictable environments can be anxiety-provoking and elicit exaggerated emotional responses to aversive stimuli. Even neutral stimuli, when presented in an unpredictable fashion, prime anxiety-like behavior and elicit heightened amygdala activity. The amygdala plays a key role in initiating responses to biologically relevant information, such as facial expressions of emotion. While some expr...

Social Investment in Latin America

Communication in processes of social change in Latin America: Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador and Venezuela

Research introduction and methodology. In this research, four cases of social change processes in Latin America have been analyzed, paying special attention to the relationship between media, democracy and power. A selection of countries has been chosen because of their specific characteristics, as they represent different models of communication democratization: Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador and...