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

Abstract

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.

A twelve-country population-based psychometric validation study of the Arabic version of the Social Pain Questionnaire (SPQ)

“…al., This means that the social pain construct is measured on a continuum, and respondents can be somewhere in the middle or near an extreme end of the continuum for each social pain emotional experience. Furthermore, both the Cronbach's alpha and McDonald's Omega were greater than 0.9, indicating excellent internal reliability, which was in line with previous validation studies of the SPQ (German samples: Cronbach's α = .94(Schwarz et al, 2021;Stangier et al, 2021); Persian sample: Cronbach's α = 0.91(Sepehrinia et al, 2024)). …”

“…More recently, the SPQ was translated to the Persian language and validated in a sample of Iranian adults from the general population, where it showed a one-dimensional construct, excellent internal consistency, divergent and convergent validity as revealed through correlations between the SPQ and measures of self-esteem, perceived social support, and interpersonal sensitivity (Sepehrinia et al, 2024). The psychometric properties of the SPQ have also been examined in German adolescents aged 14 to 20 years, where it showed a unidimensional factor structure and high internal consistency (Schwarz et al, 2021). To date, there is no validated version of the SPQ suitable for use in Arabic-speaking populations.…”

Contents and Characteristics of Mental Imagery and their Association with Emotional Intensity in Adolescents: A Pilot Study

“…Exploratively, we investigated the association between subjectively perceived control over positive and negative MI and emotions and distress, and hypothesized that less control is associated with higher levels of associated anxiety and distress in negative MI and associated with higher levels of joy in positive MI. The study presented below constructs the basis for the investigation on MI and social pain, in which the association between the characteristics and MI and the construct of social pain was assessed (see Schwarz et al, 2021).…”

Sensory processing sensitivity and social pain: a hypothesis and theory

“…While physical pain is related to actual or potential tissue damage, social pain is associated with psychological distance from other people or social groups ( Xiao et al, 2020 ). Indeed, social pain is considered a strong experience of discomfort and distress caused by ostracism (i.e., social exclusion or loss such as rejection from the others or the own group) that involve affective, behavioral and cognitive iatrogenic consequences ( Eisenberger and Lieberman, 2004 ; Eisenberger, 2012 ; Wesselmann et al, 2012 ; Sturgeon and Zautra, 2016 ; McIver et al, 2019 ; Kiefer et al, 2021 ; Schwarz et al, 2021 ; Jauch et al, 2022 ). Physical and social pain share not only physiological-adaptive characteristics to the environment, psychological and behavioral manifestation, but also a strong capacity for interaction and interpenetration ( Xiao et al, 2020 ).…”