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A wide range of survey studies have explored vaccination hesitancy/resistance during the COVID-19 pandemic and provided evidence that this can be explained by several individual variables from the ideological, clinical, and socio-affective domain. However, evidence about which individual variables predict vaccine hesitancy in the post-pandemic state of COVID-19 is meager. We administered a battery of questionnaires to a group of 120 Italian participants with high and low scores on the adult vaccine hesitancy scale (aVHS) to investigate the predictive role of ideological (i.e. political orientation), clinical (i.e. anxiety, interoceptive accuracy), and socio-affective (i.e. alexithymia, disgust sensitivity/propensity, empathy) variables on vaccine hesitancy/resistance. This study provides evidence that lower interoceptive awareness and cognitive empathy are predictors of a greater hesitancy to get vaccinated in the post-pandemic COVID-19 state.

Dissociation is an involuntary defensive mechanism to protect oneself by avoiding unbearable internal conflicts or overwhelming emotions. Cultivating mindful awareness could allow the development of voluntary processes that can offer part of the self-protective function of dissociation while favoring internal integration processes. The aim of the present study was to explore the effects of a 7-week Mindfulness Oriented Meditation (MOM) training on healthy individuals' self-reported dissociative experience, mindfulness skills and interoceptive awareness. After the training, in comparison to a waiting-list control group (N = 102), the MOM group (N = 110) showed reduced dissociative tendencies (p <.05), increased dispositional mindfulness (p <.001) and increased interoceptive awareness (in the aspects of not-worrying, self-regulation and body listening; p <.001). Moreover, correlational evidence showed that the more MOM participants increased in mindfulness skills after the training the more they reported increased interoceptive awareness and decreased dissociative functioning (p <.05). Mindfulness skills also improved with more home meditation practice executed by MOM participants (p <.05). These findings were attributed to a possible role of mindfulness meditation in enabling the development of volitional processes that afford psychological safety and integration, in contrast with the involuntary nature of dissociation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-standing hypothesis that emotions rely on bodily states is back in the spotlight. This has led some researchers to suggest that alexithymia, a personality construct characterized by altered emotional awareness, reflects a general deficit in interoception. However, tests of this hypothesis have relied on heterogeneous assessment methods, leading to inconsistent results. To shed some light on this issue, we administered a battery of self-report questionnaires of interoception and alexithymia to three samples from Italy, the U.S., and Singapore (N = 814). Correlation and machine learning analyses showed that alexithymia was associated with deficits in both subjective interoceptive accuracy and attention. Alexithymics' interoceptive deficits were primarily related to difficulty identifying and describing feelings. Interoception showed a weaker association with externally-oriented thinking as operationalized by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and no association with the affective dimension of alexithymia later introduced by the Bermond-Vorst Alexithymia Questionnaire (BVAQ). We discuss our results with reference to the theoretical and psychometric differences between these two measures of alexithymia and their shortcomings. Overall, our results support the view that interoceptive deficits are a core component of alexithymia, although the latter cannot be reduced to the former. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific evidence plays an important role in the therapeutic decision-making process. What happens when physicians are forced to make therapeutic decisions under uncertainty? The absence of scientific guidelines at the beginning of a pandemic due to an unknown virus, such as COVID-19, could influence the perceived legitimacy of the application of non-evidence-based therapeutic approaches. This paper reports on a test of this hypothesis, in which we administered an ad hoc questionnaire to a sample of 64 Italian physicians during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy (April 2020). The questionnaire statements regarding the legitimacy of off-label or experimental drugs were framed according to three different scenarios (Normality, Emergency and COVID-19). Furthermore, as the perception of internal bodily sensations (i.e., interoception) modulates the decision-making process, we tested participants' interoceptive sensibility using the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA). The results showed that participants were more inclined to legitimate non-evidence-based therapeutic approaches in the COVID-19 and Emergency scenarios than the Normality scenario. We also found that scores on the MAIA Trusting subscale positively predicted this difference. Our findings demonstrate that uncertain medical scenarios, involving a dramatic increase in patient volume and acuity, can increase risk-taking in therapeutic decision-making. Furthermore, individual characteristics of health care providers, such as interoceptive ability, should be taken into account when constructing models to prevent the breakdown of healthcare systems in cases of severe emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process and project of rememory (after Toni Morrison's Beloved, 1987) may be linked with a politics of hope – to exorcise, to move on, to empower; rememories are emergent 'sites of feeling' capable of triggering bodily reactions and emotional responses. This article takes stock of some emergent traces of post-conflict materialities that can be explored through storytelling, in this case, of the civil war between fascists and anti-fascists in Italy during the Second World War (1943–1945). The author reflects on the cathartic capacity of rememory through two wartime storytelling 'experiments'. In a town square, the Surviving Thing is the handed-down memory of two executions, one on each side, haunting the place but without physical in situ traces of those acts. In 2014, veteran fascists and anti-fascists and their descendants re-enacted violent episodes on both sides that had left no visible or tangible traces. They used spatial clues in archival photographs, triangulating the traces to conjure up spectral geographies of death on both political sides, to 'get closure'. In another example, a Surviving Thing is present as a physical object (a letter) without mnemonic trace. In 2012, an ex-partisan paid tribute to unsung heroes of the local resistance by writing an open letter that commemorated their bravery. While also looking for closure (or perhaps an opening up?), she wrote to dispel the oblivion to which history banished the boys' actions – to fill an absence with an affectual presence. The well-thumbed sheet is thus animated in the moment of witnessing through a loving act of rememory. The two post-conflict sites reveal something of the affectual and cathartic capacity of traces that survive and those that do not. Overall, rememories perform intangible affects that frame the nuanced social legacies of conflict, while the 'experiments' embody the centrality of storytelling to the material culture of post-conflict societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Objective: Bodily processes have been intimately linked to social-cognitive and affective functions, such as compassion and empathy. Yet, little is known about how awareness of bodily processes influences social awareness and vice versa, especially in nonobservational but experiential investigations. This study investigated the relationship between psychometrically reported body and social awareness (including altruism, empathy, perspective-taking, and compassion) in 90 yoga and yoga-/mediation-naive control participants. In modern postural yoga, advanced practitioners claim both increased compassion and inner focus. Methods: Multiple regression analyses were conducted to predict (1) the level of yoga practice from body awareness and social awareness skills in the yoga group and (2) body awareness from social skills in both groups. Results: Body awareness and compassion were significant positive and independent predictors of yoga expertise. This finding supports practitioners' anecdotal claims but also implies that both functions tap into different aspects of yoga expertise. When body awareness was predicted, altruism emerged as a significant negative predictor in the yoga group (but not control group) as a function of yoga practice. Conclusion: These results might compellingly suggest that, despite high compassion, heightened bodily self-awareness might increase a self-centred perspective and limit altruistic acts in advanced yoga practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Body awareness disorders and reactivity are mentioned across a range of clinical problems. Constitutional differences in the control of the bodily state are thought to generate a vulnerability to psychological symptoms. Autonomic nervous system dysfunctions have been associated with anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress. Though interoception may be a transdiagnostic mechanism promoting the improvement of clinical symptomatology, few psychometrically sound, symptom-independent, self-report measures, informed by brain-body circuits, are available for research and clinical use. We validated the Italian version of the body perception questionnaire (BPQ)-short form and found that response categories could be collapsed from five to three and that the questionnaire retained a three-factor structure with items reduced from 46 to 22 (BPQ-22). The first factor was loaded by body awareness items; the second factor comprised some items from the body awareness scale and some from the subdiaphragmatic reactivity scale (but all related to bloating and digestive issues), and the third factor by supradiaphragmatic reactivity items. The BPQ-22 had sound psychometric properties, good convergent and discriminant validity and test-retest reliability and could be used in clinical and research settings in which the body perception assessment is of interest. Psychometric findings in light of the polyvagal theory are discussed.

Objectives: Interoception is a general sensitivity to bodily sensations that informs motivational processes and behaviours. Interoceptive abilities seem to be impaired in several clinical conditions, and the development of new pragmatic instruments to assess subjective components of interoception are crucially needed. An easy to use paper and pencil questionnaire measuring sensitivity to bodily sensations was validated in an Italian sample (Self-Awareness Questionnaire; SAQ)., Methods: In the present study, we created and evaluated an electronic version of the SAQ in Italian and English language., Results: Psychometric properties of both electronic versions of the SAQ were validated in an Italian (n = 206) and an English (n = 275) sample, using factorial analyses. Differences in factorial structures observed between the two samples were discussed in terms of cultural impact on emotional regulation and bodily sensations processing., Conclusions: The electronic version of SAQ in English and Italian provides a pragmatic and validated tool to evaluate bodily signal sensitivity in clinical settings, informing the development of a new therapy targeting interoceptive processes, in a wide range of psychopathological conditions., (© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)