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Pain catastrophizing emerges in the literature as one of the most important psychological determinants of both pain itself and the negative outcomes commonly associated with it. However, despite decades of research confirming the impact of catastrophizing, there are still areas that remain unexplored or in which the surface has only been scratched. The overall aim of this dissertation was to expand existing knowledge about catastrophizing and to advance the theoretical framework around the concept. The role of catastrophizing was explored in three distinct areas: during pain in childbirth, in exposure treatment for back pain patients, and in a problem solving context. The findings from the three studies confirmed the vital role of catastrophizing in these areas. Firstly, catastrophizing played a critical role in pain in childbirth; women who catastrophized reported labor pain as more intense and the subsequent recovery period as longer than women who did not catastrophize. Secondly, catastrophizing was identified as a moderator of treatment effect in exposure in vivo for back pain patients with pain-related fear; patients who catastrophized were not helped by the exposure. Thirdly, catastrophizing played a role in a problem solving context; although this is in line with contemporary models such as the misdirected problem solving model, the results suggested a somewhat different pathway to this previous model. Taken together, these findings underscore the instrumental role of catastrophizing in diverse areas and imply a need for catastrophzing to be assessed and addressed in clinical contexts. In addition, the findings highlight a need for further development of the theoretical framework around catastrophizing as well as treatment interventions that directly target catastrophizing. Based on these needs, a new model of catastrophizing was proposed – a model of catastrophizing from a process perspective. In this model, the proposed function of catastrophizing is to down-regulate negative affect, as a form of internal avoidance. The model is a complement to existing theoretical models and provides a framework for developing treatment interventions that directly target catastrophizing, for example by problem solving skills training. Successful interventions for people who catastrophize would lead to several gains – for the individual in less suffering and increased ability to handle pain problems, and for society as a whole in reduced costs for health care for these individuals.

This thesis is a description and analysis of work that I produced during my Graduate studies at The University of New Orleans. The central theme of these work is the end of the world. Through prints, sculpture and painting I explore this idea.

"This paper reports the results of an investigation into the relation of the emotion of fear and learning. Purposes of the investigation were: 1. To bring together some of the literature in education and psychology that deals with fear and learning. 2. To study the fears of elementary school pupils. 3. To make recommendations on the basis of purpose one and purpose two that might be useful to school teachers"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "August, 1956." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts." / Advisor: Marian Black, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 24-26).

Wong Hiu-wing. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-106). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 1: --- Fear as a Daughter --- p.9 / Chapter Chapter 2: --- Fear as a Wife --- p.39 / Chapter Chapter 3: --- Fear as a Mother --- p.73 / Conclusion --- p.101 / Works Cited --- p.103

This dissertation aspires to revive the dystopian liberalism which identifies the avoidance of the worst as the fundamental aim of politics. The theory I present consists of three elements overall: The first element is what I call the Priority Claim, stating that the most important aim of social institutions should, morally speaking, be to avoid cruelty qua worst evil (Part I). The second element is the identification of the informal structure, the set of social norms within a population, as an important site to realize this ideal (Part II). The third element is the application of the principle that cruelty be avoided to the in-formal structure (Part III). This leads to an account of desirable social norms and in turn to a concrete answer to the question how individuals can in their everyday lives do their part to create a world that is overall less cruel and more humane.

Nonprofit organizations face a unique challenge in communicating their messages in a marketing saturated world. The author of this research studied how nonprofit organizations used fear, disgust and empathy in their marketing campaigns to see if the use of these emotions would have an effect on six different factors. The results of this study showed how the use of distress can be used to amplify the feelings people have when they see images that contain both fear and disgust.

The anxiety provoked by acknowledgement of the imminent end of existence or death is probably the one which agitates a human being most deeply. The attempt of this paper is not to give an answer as to how to reach immortality, but to explore the author's assumption that for acknowledgement of the mystery of death it is necessary first to discover a being's authentic identity. That is to discover her/his real essence which is hidden under the 'artificial' identity, where this identity is considered the being's ego, an identity formed upon the relative truth of life. The truths of life are relative because they are established by the people, thus they are based upon the changeable and contradictory nature of human beings. The focus of the paper is on researching the establishment of a being's identity, which is formed through she/he having two contradictory relationships with other human beings. The first one is negation and the other one is of acknowledgement of the identity of the other. The examination deals with art works of several contemporary artists, where most of them have experienced war. The philosophical framework of this examination uses the texts of French philosopher Emmanual Levinas, amongst others / Master of Arts (Hons) (Visual Arts)

<p>Cognitive theories claim that phobias involve unconscious processing and that anxious individuals search the environment for threatening stimuli and therefore detect them more rapidly. However, evidence for this is mixed and suggests that anxious individuals do not detect threat more accurately but are more liberal to report that they detected threat even if there was no actual threat (response bias). In this study, 55 women performed a detection task with pictures of snakes, spiders, and guns. The pictures were backward masked to reduce their visibility. Participants also filled in questionnaires that assessed their fear and disgust. As found in previous studies, detection performance did not correlate with fear. However, inconsistent with previous results, disgust sensitivity correlated with lower detection performance of snakes, and response biases varied with fear of spiders or snakes. These findings provide mixed support for notions of relationships between fear and disgust in threat detection.</p>

<p>Stressrelaterad ohälsa återfinns bland de vanligaste orsakerna till sjukfrånvaro i Sverige enligt statistik 2009. För att namnge stressrelaterad ohälsa används bl a utbrändhet, utmattningssyndrom och utmattningsdepression. Den förstnämnda benämningen anses som en olämplig felaktigt förmedlande direktöversättning ifrån det engelska ordet burnout medan den andra och tredje benämningen används och fungerar som erkända begrepp. Det utmattade tillståndet innebär en mängd fysiologiska och psykiska besvär däribland den basala emotionen rädsla och komplexa emotionen ångest. Syftet med undersökningen var att djupstudera dessa emotioner i samband med utmattningssyndrom. I undersökningen deltog 8 personer med erfarenhet av fenomenet. Skriftligen beskrivna svar bearbetades och analyserades enligt metoden meningskoncentrering. I resultatet redovisas fysiologiska och psykiska upplevelser i samband med rädsla och ångest samt tankar och beteenden som upplevdes föregå och/eller förvärra rädslan och ångesten. Upplevelserna kännetecknades av mångfald och gemensamhet där djupgående beskrivningar kan bidra till en ökad kunskap och förståelse samt utgöra en grund för identifiering. Rädslan och ångesten utgör en del i en upplevd komplex problematik kring utmattningssyndrom .</p>