Most agree that, in some special scenarios, prudence can speak against feeling a fitting emotion. Some go further, arguing that the tension between fittingness and prudence afflicts some emotions in a fairly general way. This paper goes even further: it argues that, when it comes to anxiety, the tension between fittingness and prudence is nearly inescapable. On any plausible theory, an enormous array of possible outcomes are both bad and epistemically uncertain in the right way to ground fitting (...) class='Hi'>anxiety. What’s more, the fittingness of an emotion is a demanding, not a permissive, normative status. So the norms of fitting emotion demand a great deal of anxiety. For almost any realistic agent, it would be deeply imprudent to feel anxiety in a way that meets the demands set by norms of fitting emotion. (shrink)

A familiar feature of moral life is the distinctive anxiety that we feel in the face of a moral dilemma or moral conflict. Situations like these require us to take stands on controversial issues. But because we are unsure that we will make the correct decision, anxiety ensues. Despite the pervasiveness of this phenomenon, surprisingly little work has been done either to characterize this “ moral anxiety” or to explain the role that it plays in our moral (...) lives. This paper aims to address this deficiency by developing an empirically informed account of what moral anxiety is and what it does. (shrink)

Negative emotions are often thought to lack value—they’re pernicious, inherently unpleasant, and inconsistent with human virtue. Taking anxiety as a case study, I argue that this assessment is mistaken. I begin with an account of what anxiety is: a response to uncertainty about a possible threat or challenge that brings thoughts about one’s predicament (‘I’m worried,’ ‘What should I do?’), negatively valenced feelings of concern, and a motivational tendency toward caution regarding the potential threat one faces. Given this (...) account of what anxiety is, I show it can be instrumentally valuable: in sensitizing us to uncertainty and prompting caution and risk assessment efforts, it’s an emotion that can help us better recognize and respond to uncertain threats and challenges. But anxiety can also be aretaically valuable—that is, it’s an emotion that can contribute positively to one’s character. For instance, your anxiety about how best to care for your aging mother not only prompts helpful brainstorming about what you should do, but also reflect well on you—your unease demonstrates both an admirable sensitivity and emotional attunement to what’s at stake. (shrink)

Self-esteem can influence educational success, and educational success can also be influenced by self-esteem. Hence, high self-esteem has been recognized as a key predictor of academic success in students. Thus, this study investigates the relationship between self-esteem and anxiety of senior high school students. Employing descriptive-correlational design with 194 senior high school students enrolled in private schools during the school year 2021-2022. Based on the statistical analysis, there is a correlation between self-esteem and anxiety (r.=.125).

Researchers are increasingly trying to understand both the emotions that we experience in response to ecological crises like climate change and the ways in which these emotions might be valuable for our (psychical, psychological, and moral) wellbeing. However, much of the existing work on these issues has been hampered by conceptual and methodological difficulties. As a first step toward addressing these challenges, this review focuses on eco-anxiety. Analyzing a broad range of studies through the use of methods from philosophy, (...) emotion theory, and interdisciplinary environmental studies, the authors show how looking to work on anxiety in general can help researchers build better models of eco-anxiety in particular. The results of this work suggest that the label “eco-anxiety” may be best understood as referring to a family of distinct, but related, ecological emotions. The authors also find that a specific form of eco-anxiety, “practical eco-anxiety,” can be a deeply valuable emotional response to threats like climate change: when experienced at the right time and to the right extent, practical eco-anxiety not only reflects well on one’s moral character but can also help advance individual and planetary wellbeing. (shrink)

Do we apply higher epistemic standards to subjects with high stakes? This paper argues that we expect different outward behavior from high-stakes subjects—for example, we expect them to collect more evidence than their low-stakes counterparts—but not because of any change in epistemic standards. Rather, we naturally expect subjects in any condition to think in a roughly adaptive manner, balancing the expected costs of additional evidence collection against the expected value of gains in accuracy. The paper reviews a body of empirical (...) work on the automatic regulation of cognitive effort in response to stakes, and argues that we naturally see high- and low-stakes subjects as experiencing different levels of ‘epistemic anxiety’, and anticipate different levels of cognitive effort from them for this reason. If unresolved epistemic anxiety always bars an ascription of knowledge, then we can explain our responses to cases involving shifting stakes without positing any variation in the standards of intuitive knowledge ascription. (shrink)

Moral anxiety is the unease that we experience in the face of a novel or difficult moral decision, an unease that helps us recognize the significance of the issue we face and engages epistemic behaviors aimed at helping us work through it (reflection, information gathering, etc.). But recent discussions in philosophy raise questions about the value of moral anxiety (do we really do better when we’re anxious?); and work in cognitive science challenges its psychological plausibility (is there really (...) such an emotion?). Drawing on Kant and Kantians, I develop a model of moral anxiety (or ‘conscience’ in Kant’s terminology) that highlights both its empirical credentials and its distinctive value. Kant, it turns out, was an early—and sophisticated—dual-process theorist. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger gave a penetrating account of the different varieties of the moods of anxiety and boredom, which have no doubt been prevalent in the human experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. Heidegger theorized a particular type of anxiety and boredom as what I call 'revelatory moods', intense affective experiences that involve an encounter with our existence as such, our world, freedom and responsibility for the creation and proliferation of significance. Revelatory moods contain much emancipatory potential, acting as existential (...) catalysts for our being able to authentically seize hold of our lives and possibilities as free agents. For Heidegger, the experiences of anxiety and boredom as ones that put us into contact with the structure of our world and the stunning scope of our freedom, letting us know what we can do and are capable of. But can the same be said of these experiences as they occur in a time when our freedom has been dramatically reduced? I claim that Heidegger's theory can be productively built on, arguing that the anxiety and boredom of the pandemic puts us into contact not with the scope of our freedom, but its reduced limits. But it is the experience of encountering these limits that makes it possible for us to begin to work out how to live in spite of them, forging new modes of solidarity and its enactment. Living authentically in this new situation in spite of our reduced freedom must take place on a prior disclosure of the limits of this freedom. Heidegger locates the possibility of such a disclosure in revelatory anxiety and boredom. (shrink)

The current study analyzed how trait emotional intelligence (trait EI) mediates the relationship between self-esteem and state anxiety (STAI-S) and trait anxiety (STAI-T). The sample was composed of 153 undergraduate students from the University of Cádiz, Spain (71.9% women and 28.1% men). Students completed measures of self-esteem, STAI-S, STAI-T, and trait EI. Mediation analyses were completed with three trait EI dimensions (emotional attention -EA-, emotional clarity -EC-, and mood repair -MR) as mediating variables, self-esteem as the independent variable, (...) and STAI-S and STAI-T as the dependent ones. Our results confirmed that self-esteem scores explained and predicted both, STAI-S and STAI-T values (13% for STAI-S and 21% for STAI-T). This explanatory capacity is increased by 8% when accounting for all trait EI dimensions. Considering STAI-S, the results of the direct effects showed that a decrease in their levels is predicted through the increases in the levels of both, self-esteem and MR. Regarding STAI-T, the results of the direct effects showed that a decrease in their levels is predicted, in addition to an increment of self-esteem and MR values, by an increase of EC and a decrease of EA. Conversely, indirect effects revealed that higher levels of self-esteem were associated with worse scores in EA and worse MR, which in turn would enhance both STAI-S and STAI-T levels. Moreover, regarding STAI-T higher levels of self-esteem were associated with worse scores in EA and worse EC, therefore increasing STAI-T levels. As shown, the negative association found between self-esteem and EA becomes a key element. The effect of self-esteem on EA and the influence that the latter had on EC and MR exerts an indirect mediated effect with the power to invert the influence that self-esteem wields on both types of anxiety. In this sense, the apparent protective role of self-esteem changed, turning into a risk factor that promotes higher anxiety values. (shrink)

Emotion plays an important role in securing social stability. But while emotions like fear, anger, and guilt have received much attention in this context, little work has been done to understand the role that anxiety plays. That’s unfortunate. I argue that a particular form of anxiety—what I call ‘practical anxiety’—plays an important, but as of yet unrecognized, role in norm-based social regulation. More specifically, it provides a valuable form of metacognition, one that contributes to social stability by (...) helping individuals negotiate the challenges that come from having to act in the face of unclear norms. (shrink)

Phenomenology's central insight is that affectivity is not an inconsequential or contingent characteristic of human existence. Emotions, moods, sentiments, and feelings are not accidents of human existence. They do not happen to happen to us. Rather, we exist the way we do because of and through our affective experiences. Phenomenology thus acknowledges the centrality and ubiquity of affectivity by noting the multitude of ways in which our existence is permeated by our various affective experiences. Yet, it also insists that such (...) experiences are both revealing and constitutive of human nature. It is precisely this last point that marks an important distinction between a phenomenological study of affectivity and perhaps all others. For phenomenology, one cannot understand the nature of human existence without coming to terms with the character of affectivity and at the same time, one cannot come to terms with the character of affectivity without understanding the nature of human existence. Practical and social engagements, scientific endeavors, familial and political interactions are all predicted on the fact that we are beings who are capable of being affectively attuned to ourselves, to the world, and to others. In this entry, we discuss Martin Heidegger's and Jean-Paul Sartre's respective accounts of affectivity. In the first section, we present Heidegger's understanding of affective existence. In this context, we discuss the significance of moods and offer an analysis of the affective phenomena of fear, anxiety, and boredom. In the second section, we present an overview of Sartre's account of emotions and advance a Sartrean interpretation of fear and boredom. We conclude by raising some brief concerns with both accounts. (shrink)

Anxiety versus fear, wonder versus curiosity are some of the ways in which philosophers have described encounters with nothing. What does it mean to be anxious in the face of nothing in particular, and to wonder at the mere fact that anything exists, rather than nothing? For Kierkegaard anxiety opens freedom, for Heidegger wonder is a distress and for Wittgenstein wonder and anxiety are deeply connected to the ethical.

Emotions might contribute to our being rational cognitive agents. Anxiety – and more specifically epistemic anxiety – provides an especially interesting case study into the role of emotion for adaptive cognition. In this paper, I aim at clarifying the epistemic contribution of anxiety, and the role that ill-calibrated anxiety might play in maladaptive epistemic activities which can be observed in psychopathology. In particular, I argue that this emotion contributes to our ability to adapt our cognitive efforts (...) to how we represent the practical factors relevant to the task at hand, by sig- naling the need for increased cognitive processing and evidence gathering in high- stakes situations. I hypothesize that dysfunctional or ill-calibrated epistemic anxiety might play an important role in the motivation driving persons with obsessive- compulsive disorder (OCD) to invest high amounts of cognitive resources into the resolution of apparently simple and innocuous questions. As I argue, OCD might be conceived as a case in which epistemic anxiety is inappropriately elicited, represent- ing these as high-stakes questions, and inadequately signaling a need for cognition. In this paper, I thus make use of the concept of (epistemic) anxiety as developed in the philosophy of emotion and in epistemology, to propose an account of the role of anxiety in the pathological doubt that is central to obsessive-compulsive disorder. (shrink)

We frequently hear that we live in an age of anxiety, from 'therapy culture', the Atkins diet and child anti-depressants to gun culture and weapons of mass destruction. While Hollywood regularly cashes in on teenage anxiety through its Scream franchise, pharmaceutical companies churn out new drugs such as Paxil to combat newly diagnosed anxieties. On Anxiety takes a fascinating, psychological plunge behind the scenes of our panic stricken culture and into anxious minds, asking who and what is (...) responsible. Putting anxiety on the couch, Renata Salecl asks some much-needed questions: Is anxiety about the absence of authority or too much of it? Do the media report anxiety or create it? Are drugs a cure for anxiety or its cause? Is anxiety about being yourself or someone else, and is anxiety really the ultimate obstacle to happiness? Drawing on vivid examples from films such as the X Files and Cyrano de Bergerac , drugs used on soldiers to combat anxiety, the anxieties of love and motherhood, and fake Holocaust memoirs, Renata Salecl argues that what really produces anxiety is the attempt to get rid of it. Erudite and compelling, On Anxiety is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, psychology and the cultural phenomenon of anxiety today. (shrink)

Environmental anxiety is often thought of as a psychopathological condition. Our paper aims to challenge this narrow understanding by offering an existential-phenomenological interpretation of environmental anxiety that posits it as an _existential attunement_ with a transformative potential, capable of opening the anxious individual to a hopeful and meaningful outlook on the future. In the first part of the paper, we provide a conceptual analysis of environmental anxiety, drawing on current interdisciplinary taxonomies of environmental emotions as well as (...) on existential-phenomenological definitions of anxiety. We then proceed to define the two key existential characteristics of environmental anxiety, firstly (i) its ability to reframe the aesthetic perception of nature, and secondly (ii) its impact on the subjective constitution of meaning. In the second part of the paper, drawing on the work of Kierkegaard and contemporary ecopsychological and ecotheological thinkers, a distinction is made between a naïve and a radical form of environmental hope. It is argued that while the former type of hope leads to inactivity, the latter is capable of motivating individuals to pro-environmental action. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an account of epistemic anxiety as an emotional response to epistemic risk: the risk of believing in error. The motivation for this account is threefold. First, it makes epistemic anxiety a species of anxiety, thus rendering psychologically respectable a notion that has heretofore been taken seriously only by epistemologists. Second, it illuminates the relationship between anxiety and risk. It is standard in psychology to conceive of anxiety as a response to (...) risk, but psychologists – very reasonably – have little to say about risk itself, as opposed to risk judgement. In this paper, I specify what risk must be like to be the kind of thing to which anxiety can be a response. Third, my account improves on extant accounts of epistemic anxiety in the literature. It is more fleshed out than Jennifer Nagel’s, which is largely agnostic about the nature of epistemic anxiety, focusing instead on what work it does in our epistemic lives. In offering an account of epistemic anxiety as an emotion, my account explains how it is able to do the epistemological work to which Nagel puts it. My account is also more plausible than Juliette Vazard’s, on which epistemic anxiety is an emotional response to potential threat to one’s practical interests. Vazard’s account cannot distinguish epistemic anxiety from anxiety in general, and also fails to capture all instances of what we want to call epistemic anxiety. My account does better on both counts. (shrink)

본 논문은, 서양 근대 자유 담론의 탈근대화를 이끄는 핵심 동력으로서 불안 개념이 가지는 의미를 규명하고자 한다. 이를 위해 근대와 탈근대의 이행기에 어떤 다른 사상가보다도 적극적으로 불안을 철학의 주요 개념으로 수용하여 발전시킨 두 명의 철학자 셸링과 키에르케고어의 논의를 연구의 주요 대상으로 삼는다. 이들은, 인간자유의 본질을 오로지 이성 능력에서 근거 지우려는 근대 이성주의적 사유에 반대하여 불안이라는 “근본 느낌”(Grundempfindung)에서 인간 자유의 본질을 규명하기 위한 실마리를 모색한다. 특히 셸링은 이러한 탈근대적 시도의 선구적 사례를 제공한다. 이성주의에 기반을 둔 서양 근대 자유 담론이 한창 만개하던 19세기 (...) 초에 그는 이미 이성주의적 자유 개념의 근본적인 한계와 문제를 지적하고 이를 극복하기 위한 실마리로 불안 개념에 주목한다. 셸링의 시도는, 불안에 대한 키에르케고어의 포괄적인 연구, 그리고 그의 연구를 자양분 삼아 전개되는 하이데거를 비롯한 현대 사상가의 불안 연구를 예비한다. 본 논문은 이러한 사상적 흐름을 좇아 서양 근대이래로 본격적으로 진행된 자유 담론의 역사에서 불안 개념이 가지는 의미를 발굴하려는 좀 더 포괄적인 연구의 한 부분으로 기획되었다. (shrink)

RESUMEN El artículo responde algunas críticas planteadas por Ignacio Ávila a mi interpretación de la epistemología davidsoniana. Presento argumentos en contra de: a) que sea necesario distinguir entre representaciones epistemológicamente “peligrosas”e “inofensivas”; b) que el empirismo mínimo sea un tipo de realismo directo; c) que mi uso de la expresión “evidencia distal” y el interés por la teoría de la correspondencia sean asuntos ajenos a Davidson. Finalmente, sostengo que la triangulación es un elemento fundamental de la epistemología davidsoniana, pues permite (...) sortear la ansiedad realista manteniéndose en una postura no representacionalista. ABSTRACT In this article, I respond to some of Ignacio Ávila's criticisms of my interpretation of Davidson’s epistemology. I argue against: a) the need to distinguish between epistemologically “dangerous” and “harmless” representations; b) the idea that minimal empiricism is a kind of direct realism; and c) the claim that my usage of the expression “distal evidence” and interest in the theory of correspondence are issues that do not pertain to Davidson. Finally, I claim that triangulation is a key element in Davidsonian epistemology since it allows us to deal with the realist anxiety while maintaining a non-representationalist viewpoint. (shrink)

Today, anxiety is usually thought of as a pathology, the most diagnosed and medicated of all psychological disorders. But anxiety isn't always or only a medical condition. Indeed, many philosophers argue that anxiety is a normal, even essential, part of being human, and that coming to terms with this fact is potentially transformative, allowing us to live more meaningful lives by giving us a richer understanding of ourselves. In Anxiety, Samir Chopra explores valuable insights about (...) class='Hi'>anxiety offered by ancient and modern philosophies-Buddhism, existentialism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. Blending memoir and philosophy, he also tells how serious anxiety has affected his own life-and how philosophy has helped him cope with it. Chopra shows that many philosophers-including the Buddha, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger-view anxiety as an inevitable human response to existence: to be is to be anxious. Drawing on Karl Marx and Herbert Marcuse, Chopra examines how poverty and other material conditions can make anxiety worse, but he emphasizes that not even the rich can escape it. Nor can the medicated. Inseparable from the human condition, anxiety is indispensable for grasping it. Philosophy may not be able to cure anxiety but, by leading us to greater self-knowledge and self-acceptance, it may be able to make us less anxious about being anxious. Personal, poignant, and hopeful, Anxiety is a book for anyone who is curious about rethinking anxiety and learning why it might be a source not only of suffering but of insight. (shrink)

In the context of a history of the emotions, Martin Heidegger presents an important and yet challenging case. He is important because he places emotional states, broadly construed, at the very heart of his philosophical methodology—in particular, anxiety and boredom. He is challenging because he is openly dismissive of the standard ontologies of emotions, and because he is largely uninterested in many of the canonical debates in which emotions figure. My aim in this chapter is to identify and critique (...) the distinctive role which Heidegger allots to the emotions, focusing on Sein und Zeit's famous treatment of anxiety. Having outlined his position, I close by considering a number of challenges, both methodological and substantive, to Heidegger's approach. (shrink)

: This study examines the effectiveness of systematic desensitizationtreatment on mathematics anxiety and performance among year one collegestudents. This study employs a quasi-experimental research design. The samplefor this study is drawn based on convenience sampling. The sample consistsof 65 year one students of which 32 are under the experimental group andanother 33 are under to control group. The instruments used in collectingdata are The Adopt and Adapt Fennama-Sherman Mathematics Attitude Scale, Neo-Five-Factory Personality Inventory, MathematicsPerformance Test, and The Systematic Desensitization (...) Module. The study postulates: mathematics anxious students who receivesystematic desensitization treatment would report a reduction in the level ofmathematics anxiety as compared to those mathematics anxious students whodo not receive any treatment; mathematics anxious students who receivesystematic desensitization treatment would perform better as comparedto those mathematics anxious students who do not receive any treatment.Quantitative data is analysed using ANOVAs. (shrink)

ObjectiveTest anxiety (TA) is a construct that has scarcely been studied based on Lang’s three-dimensional model of anxiety. The objective of this article is to investigate the repercussion of sociodemographic and academic variables on different responses for each component of anxiety and for the type of test in adolescent students.MethodA total of 1181 students from 12 to 18 years old (M= 14.7 and SD = 1.8) participated, of whom 569 were boys (48.2%) and 612 girls (51.8%). A (...) sociodemographic questionnaire and theCuestionario de Ansiedad ante los examenes-Adaptado (CAEX-A)[Test Anxiety Questionnaire-Adapted] an adaptation for Spanish secondary school levels (ESO) and Bachillerato were administered.ResultsGirls scored higher on the cognitive and physiological components of TA than boys, the intensity of the physiological response increasing with age. Bachillerato level students reported more physiological anxiety than those of ESO level. Students with better marks in the previous year presented more anxiety in the cognitive component, while those who obtained the lower mark presented higher anxiety values in the behavioral component. Participants reported that the types of tests that cause them more anxiety were oral tests in front of the class, oral presentation in front of a panel, and mathematics tests.ConclusionAdolescents show a differential response of TA based on the physiological, cognitive and motor components, mediated by the variables of gender, age, grade, academic performance and type of exam. These results serve to design specific intervention programs to manage anxiety in situations of academic assessment. (shrink)

The world as we currently know it is troubled by climate change, leaving a marked trace in our affective landscape, for example, in the form of shame, anger, and depression. This affective landscape needs further philosophical exploration, and in this paper I use analyses by Aristotle, Heidegger, and Butler to discuss anxiety and grief. I focus on these two affects because they a) often collaborate in times of ecological destruction, and b) can be distinguished in terms of short-term intentional (...) “emotions” and as long-term, atmospheric “moods.” Due to their temporal and atmospheric flexibility, these affects gain particular traction in relating to the deep-time timescale of the Anthropocene. At the end of the paper, I discuss trust, since the affective constellation of long-term atmospheric anxiety and grief can become especially productive when combined with the safety of trust, in that such constellation may enable constructive transformations building environmentally sustainable futures. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of “eco‐anxiety” by integrating results from numerous fields of inquiry. Although climate change may cause direct psychological and existential impacts, vast numbers of people already experience indirect impacts in the form of depression, socio‐ethical paralysis, and loss of well‐being. This is not always evident, because people have developed psychological and social defenses in response, including “socially constructed silence.” I argue that this situation causes the need to frame climate change narratives as emphasizing hope in (...) the midst of tragedy. Framing the situation simply as a threat or a possibility does not work. Religious communities and the use of methods which include spirituality have an important role in enabling people to process their deep emotions and existential questions. I draw also from my experiences from Finland in enabling cooperation between natural scientists and theologians in order to address climate issues. (shrink)

The future harbours the potential for myriad threats to the fitness of organisms, and many species prepare accordingly based on indicators of hazards. Here, we distinguish between defensive responses on the basis of sensed cues and those based on autocues generated by mental simulations of the future in humans. Whereas sensed threat cues usually induce specific responses with reference to particular features of the environment or generalized responses to protect against diffuse threats, autocues generated by mental simulations of the future (...) enable strategic preparation for hazards that may not require an immediate response. The overlap of these mechanisms makes defence effective and versatile, yet can manifest as contemporary anxiety disorders in humans. (shrink)

Climate anxiety refers to persistent, difficult-to-control apprehensiveness and worry about climate change. Research to better understand the prevalence, indicators, causes, and consequences of climate anxiety is needed, to which emotion researchers can make substantial contributions. First, emotion theory can inform an integrative and functional theory of climate anxiety, mapping interactions between its cognitive, emotional, behavioural, and physiological indicators. Second, appraisal theories can help to understand the reasons why people experience climate anxiety. Third, emotion researchers can contribute (...) to theorizing when climate anxiety motivates climate action, accounting for non-linearity, interactions with other emotions and cognitions, and temporal dynamics. Fourth, emotion researchers can contribute to developing strategies to cope with climate anxiety, for example, by building on emotion regulation theory. (shrink)

Anxiety is sometimes thought of as either a state of mind, lacking a thick spatial depth, or otherwise conceived as something that individuals undergo alone. Such presuppositions are evident both conceptually and clinically. In this paper, I present a contrasting account of anxiety as being a situated affect. I develop this claim by pursuing a phenomenological analysis of agoraphobia. Far from a disembodied, displaced, and solitary state of mind, agoraphobic is revealed as being thickly mediated by bodily, spatial, (...) and intersubjective dimensions. (shrink)

For many contemporary artists, failure has been an instrument of experimentation and self-expression, of investigation into existential questions and manifestation of utopian tensions. In this paper, I will discuss how some of the well-known strategies of experimental and avant-garde artistic practices with failure involve risky actions, challenging or impossible attempts, loss of control, and compulsive repetition of inconclusive acts. In those experimentations, the ideal model of an effective and successful action performance (in which a goal is defined through a clear (...) intention, a plan and a well-controlled execution) is willfully sabotaged in its stages. In this regard, a distinction between failure and mistake will be highlighted: if failure could be traced back to the tradition of heroic or tragic defeat in front of adverse odds, mistake on the contrary means doing something wrong that one is expected to control. While failure negatively reflects our tension toward autonomy, the focus on mistakes is the expression of rigidity and heightened risk aversion in contexts where maximal efficiency and self-optimization are expected. This paper will argue that equating the category of failure with that of mistake is not faithful to the motives underlying those artistic traditions. In this respect, artistic experimentations in the “aesthetic of failure” can also be viewed as a critical response toward a general mindset defined by the anxiety of control and obsessive mistake avoidance that seems typical of our current times. (shrink)

Coping with assessment tests are known to generate anxiety frequently in the students who face them. In academic circumstances with the continued presence of emotional disturbance, high demand, and stress, emotional and physical fatigue, typical of burnout syndrome, and can be detected. Anxiety and burnout are related to each other and even more closely in high-stakes tests. One of these tests is the examination imposed in Spain for access to the university. The objective of this work is to (...) analyze the presence of anxiety and burnout and the relationship between them in students who face these tests, both during the confinement situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic and during the pandemic after the lockdown. For this purpose, we used a sample of 1,021 students with a mean age of 17.89. Of these, 866 were students who were taking the test, while the rest were university students who had passed it recently. Our results show high levels of anxiety and burnout in students who face the evaluation test during the COVID-19 pandemic, sustained over time and especially in comparison with students who had already taken the exam. The association between higher levels of anxiety and higher levels of burnout in the students who take these exams was also verified. These results link the relationship between these two variables more solidly and suggest the need to include address anxiety to reduce burnout levels in these students. The results are discussed with regard to prior evidence and their applications. (shrink)

Individuals with high anxiety show bias for threatening information, but it is unclear whether this bias affects memory. Recognition memory studies have shown biases for recognising and rejecting threatening items in anxiety, prompting the need to identify moderating factors of this effect. This study focuses on the role of semantic similarity: the use of many semantically related threatening words could increase familiarity for those items and obscure anxiety-related differences in memory. To test this, two recognition memory experiments (...) varied the proportion of threatening words in lists to manipulate the semantic-similarity effects. When similarity effects were reduced, participants with high trait anxiety were biased to respond “new” to threatening words, whereas when similarity effects were strong there was no effect of anxiety on memory bias. Analysis of the data with the drift diffusion model showed that the bias was due to differences in processing of the threatening stimuli rather than a simple response bias. These data suggest that the semantic similarity of the threatening words significantly affects the presence or absence of anxiety-related threat bias in recognition memory. The results indicate that trait anxiety is associated with a bias to decide that threatening stimuli were not previously studied, but only when semantic-similarity effects are controlled. Implications for theories of anxiety and future studies in this domain are discussed. (shrink)

The chapter explores some aspects of the relationship between self-consciousness and consciousness of others, by looking in particular at the phenomenology of social anxiety disorder. More specifically, drawing on the phenomenological distinction between pre-reflective and reflective self-consciousness, and its application to the study of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, I suggest that the disturbances of social experience characteristic of social anxiety disorder are rooted in certain alterations of self-experience, and I endeavour to provide an account of the latter. More specifically, (...) I claim that a) pathological social anxiety involves a heightening of the subject’s reflective self-consciousness, and b) that this, at least partly, originates in the experience of a low sense of self-worth, which I refer to as low “self-esteem”, and conceive of as a particular kind of background affective orientation. (shrink)

ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate anxiety and its influencing factors in patients with drug-induced liver injury (DILI).Materials and MethodsNinety-four patients with DILI were enrolled and evaluated with a self-rating anxiety scale (SAS). According to the anxiety score, they were divided into four groups: the non-anxiety, mild anxiety, moderate anxiety, or severe anxiety groups, and the scores were analyzed based on demographic and biochemical indicators.ResultsOf the 94 patients with DILI, 63 did not have (...) class='Hi'>anxiety and 31 had anxiety (32.9%), of which 27 had mild, 3 had moderate, and 1 had severe anxiety. There were no statistically significant differences in gender, age, occupation, and level of education between the groups (F= 1.42,H= 2.361,H= 6.751,H= 1.796, andP> 0.05); anxiety score and degree of anxiety between the types of drugs that led to the liver injury (H= 0.812,H= 1.712, andP> 0.05); anxiety score between the different degrees of liver injury (H= 2.836,H= 4.957,P> 0.05); or length of hospital stay or prognosis between the degrees of anxiety (F= 1.487,H= 0.761,P> 0.05). However, there were statistically significant differences in the degree of anxiety between different degree and types of liver injury (H= 7.981,H= 8.208,P< 0.05).ConclusionPatients with DILI may have anxiety, especially mild anxiety. The occurrence of anxiety in patients with DILI is not related to gender, age, occupation, or level of education but may be related to the degree and type of liver injury. Anxiety has no impact on the length of stay in hospital or the prognosis of the DILI. These findings may contribute to the development of management strategies for patients with DILI. (shrink)

The first part of this paper surveys the current literature in the history of nineteenth-century mathematics in order to show that the question “Did the increasing abstraction of mathematics lead to a sense of anxiety?” is a new and valid question. I argue that the mathematics of the nineteenth century is marked by a growing appreciation of error leading to a note of anxiety, hesitant at first but persistent by 1900. This mounting disquiet about so many aspects of (...) mathematics after 1850 is seldom discussed. The second part explores the issue of anxiety in mathematical life through an interesting account of an address made by a mathematician in 1911, Oscar Perron. The third and final part ventures some conclusions about the value of anxiety as a question for historians of mathematics to pursue. (shrink)

It is well established, following Menzies' work, that nursing practice produces considerable anxiety. Like Menzies, we bring a psychoanalytic perspective to a theorization of anxiety in nursing and do so in order to consider nursing practice in the light of psychoanalytic theory, although from a Lacanian perspective. We also draw on Bataille's notion of ‘surplus’. These concepts provide the theoretical framework for a study investigating how some clinical nurses are able to remain in clinical practice rather than leave (...) the profession or seek work at a distance from the bedside. We conducted focus groups and present here an analysis of two fragments of nurses' speech. We found the nurses responded from one of two positions. In the first position, the nurses focus on doctors, complain about the surplus afforded them, and call for it to be eliminated. In this way, the nursing group is similar to other groups, considered by Bataille, who also attempt to get rid of a surplus. However, in the second position, the nurses stay with the surplus, tolerating it as they nurse the patient. This latter position is one where the nurse practises with a focus on the patient rather than being distracted by their dispute over the doctor's privilege. The importance of this paper is in its illustration of two distinct positions from which the nurse can practise: one that is not optimal because the nurse is distracted and the other that is more focused on practice, and thus the nurse is in a position to provide the best care possible to patients. (shrink)

This paper discusses prominent examples of what we call “algorithmic anxiety” in artworks engaging with algorithms. In particular, we consider the ways in which artists such as Zach Blas, Adam Harvey and Sterling Crispin design artworks to consider and critique the algorithmic normativities that materialize in facial recognition technologies. Many of the artworks we consider center on the face, and use either camouflage technology or forms of masking to counter the surveillance effects of recognition technologies. Analyzing their works, we (...) argue they on the one hand reiterate and reify a modernist conception of the self when they conjure and imagination of Big Brother surveillance. Yet on the other hand, their emphasis on masks and on camouflage also moves beyond such more conventional critiques of algorithmic normativities, and invites reflection on ways of relating to technology beyond the affirmation of the liberal, privacy-obsessed self. In this way, and in particular by foregrounding the relational modalities of the mask and of camouflage, we argue academic observers of algorithmic recognition technologies can find inspiration in artistic algorithmic imaginaries. (shrink)

In many real-world gambles, a non-trivial amount of time passes before the uncertainty is resolved but after a choice is made. An individual may have a preference between gambles with identical probability distributions over final outcomes if they differ in the timing of resolution of uncertainty. In this domain, utility consists not only of the consumption of outcomes, but also the psychological utility induced by an unresolved gamble. We term this utility anxiety. Since a reflective decision maker may want (...) to include anxiety explicitly in analysis of unresolved lotteries, a multiple-outcome model for evaluating lotteries with delayed resolution of uncertainty is developed. The result is a rank-dependent utility representation (e.g., Quiggin, 1982), in which period weighting functions are related iteratively. Substitution rules are proposed for evaluating compound temporal lotteries. The representation is appealing for a number of reasons. First, probability weights can be interpreted as the cognitive attention allocated to certain outcomes. Second, the model disaggregates strength of preference from temporal risk aversion and thus provides some insight into the old debate about the relationship between von Neumann–Morgenstern utility functions and strength of preference value functions. (shrink)

Upon discovering that certain beliefs we hold are contingent on arbitrary features of our background, we often feel uneasy. I defend the proposal that if such cases of contingency anxiety involve defeaters, this is because of the epistemic significance of disagreement. I note two hurdles to our accepting this Disagreement Hypothesis. Firstly, some cases of contingency anxiety apparently involve no disagreement. Secondly, the proposal may seem to make our awareness of the influence of arbitrary background factors irrelevant in (...) determining whether to revise our beliefs. I show that each of these problems can be successfully accommodated by the Disagreement Hypothesis. (shrink)

This book explores the nature of modern culture as a culture of anxiety, analyzing the modes in which such anxiety presents itself. Drawing on sociological and philosophical concepts of modernity, the author builds on the work of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud to offer an understanding of modern anxiety culture as the reverse side of risk culture, which stabilizes itself by concealing or making familiar the social phenomena of risk society. Through explorations of memory, politics, art, clairvoyance, notions (...) of national community and identity, this volume sheds light on the fissures in our culture where anxiety appears, thus revealing its underlying volatility. A study of the ruptures in our modern culture, Anxiety and Lucidity will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory, anthropology and philosophy with interests in late modern culture. (shrink)

Anxiety is one of the most important affective factors affecting college students' foreign language learning. Especially in the Internet age, new teaching ideas and methods bring new load and anxiety to students' psychology. Taking students who attend a college English online course learning as the research object, this paper analyzes the general situation and professional skills of the students' psychological anxiety under the network environment by using the method of investigation and data analysis. It conceives six methods (...) to reduce the students' psychological anxiety according to the reason analysis and summarizes the more effective ways with data mining of another questionnaire. It points out that teachers can advocate the mode of group learning and peer cooperation, strengthen the timeliness and diversity of tests, increase the richness of extracurricular activities, and increase teachers' and students' quality of online teaching and learning to reduce the anxiety of students' foreign language learning in an online teaching environment. (shrink)

This essay explores the unique temporal experience in anxiety. Drawing on first-person accounts as well as examples from literature, I attempt to show how anxiety not only disrupts our physiological and cognitive timing but also disturbs the embodied rhythms of everyday social life. The primary goal, however, is to articulate the extent to which human existence itself is a temporally structured event and to identity the ways that anxiety disrupts this structure. Using Martin Heidegger’s account of human (...) existence as a point of departure, I show how the mood of anxiety has the power to alter our self-interpretations by closing down or constricting our experience of the future. I argue that a constricted future impedes our ability ‘to be’ because it closes off the range of projective meanings that we would ordinarily draw on to create or fashion our identities. (shrink)

The Anxiety-Buffering Properties of Cultural and Subcultural Worldviews: Terror Management Processes among Juvenile Delinquents Terror management research indicates that people reminded of mortality strongly affirm values and standards consistent with their cultural worldview and distance themselves from values and standards inconsistent with it. However, limited research has addressed how individuals holding beliefs inconsistent with the dominant worldview cope with death-related anxiety. The present article aims to determine which worldview subcultural groups rely on when reminded of mortality: mainstream or (...) subcultural? Juvenile delinquents living in residential reformatories in Poland were invited to participate in a terror management study examining the anxiety-buffering strategies of individuals belonging to a group largely outside mainstream culture. Following reminders of mortality, juvenile delinquents increased support for values consistent with the mainstream cultural worldview and decreased support for values consistent with the subcultural worldview, as compared to control conditions. The present results suggest that when faced with existential threat, the subcultural worldview does not provide an adequate anxiety buffer, leading members of this subcultural group to display increased identification with mainstream cultural values. Additionally, participants' state anxiety following death reminders was mediated by mainstream cultural worldview defense. (shrink)