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The use of analogue samples, as opposed to clinical groups, is common in mental health research, including research on social anxiety disorder (SAD). Recent observational and statistical evidence has raised doubts about the validity of current methods for establishing analogue samples of individuals with clinically significant social anxiety. Here, we used data from large community samples of clinical and nonclinical participants to determine new cutoff scores on self-report measures of social anxiety symptoms and symptom-related impairment. We then examined whether using these newly determined cutoff scores alone or in combination improves the identification of individuals who have SAD from those who do not, revealing the most ideal cutoff combination to be 34 or above on the Social Phobia Inventory and 11 or above on the Sheehan Disability Scale. Finally, we compared the effects of our new cutoff scores with old cutoff scores by extracting analogue samples of participants with high social anxiety from historical data on seven large groups of undergraduate Psychology research participants from the authors' institution spanning the past 5 years (2018–2023). We observed that the new combined cutoff scores identified markedly fewer students as having high social anxiety, lending credibility to their utility. We also observed a striking increase in levels of social anxiety symptoms in the undergraduate population from before to after the COVID-19 pandemic. Of note, most participants were under 30 and identified as Caucasian or Asian women, indicating that future research is needed to examine whether our findings generalize to diverse populations. Public Significance Statement: To gain insights into clinical syndromes, mental health researchers routinely use cutoff scores on symptom questionnaires to study people from the population whose characteristics resemble those of people with mental disorders. The present study recommends the use of new, combined cutoff scores on commonly used measures of social anxiety symptoms and anxiety-related impairment to increase the validity and quality of research on social anxiety disorder, a prevalent and disabling problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Models are omnipresent in science. We introduce a novel framework to achieve more effective modelling practices in general psychology and experimental psychopathology. We analyze three types of models that are common in psychology: laboratory models, computational models, and cognitive models. We then evaluate two common ways to assess the translational value of models (phenomenological similarity and deep similarity) as well as an arguably underappreciated way (functional similarity). Functional similarity is based on an assessment of whether variables (e.g., the administration of a pharmacological substance) have a similar effect (a) in the model (e.g., in a fear conditioning procedure) and (b) on the real-life target phenomenon (e.g., on real-life anxiety complaints). We argue that the assessment of functional similarity is a powerful tool to assess the translational value of models in the field of experimental psychopathology and beyond. • Laboratory, computational and cognitive models are ubiquitous in psychology. • We discuss ways to assess the external validity of a model. • Heightening functional similarity can heighten external validity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Intolerance of Uncertainty Model (IUM) of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) attributes a key role to Intolerance of Uncertainty (IU), and additional roles to Positive Beliefs about Worry (PBW), Negative Problem Orientation (NPO), and Cognitive Avoidance (CA), in the development and maintenance of worry, the core feature of GAD. Despite the role of the IUM components in worry and GAD has been considerably demonstrated, to date no studies have explicitly assessed whether and how PBW, NPO, and CA might turn IU into worry and somatic anxiety. The current studies sought to re-examine the IUM by assessing the relationships between the model’s components on two different non-clinical samples made up of UK and Italian undergraduate students. One-hundred and seventy UK undergraduates and 488 Italian undergraduates completed measures assessing IU, worry, somatic anxiety, depression, and refined measures of NPO, CA, and PBW. In each sample, two mediation models were conducted in order to test whether PBW, NPO, and CA differentially mediate the path from IU to worry and the path from IU to somatic anxiety. Secondly, it was tested whether IU also moderates the mediations. Main findings showed that, in the UK sample, only NPO mediated the path from IU to worry; as far as concern the path to anxiety, none of the putative mediators were significant. Differently, in the Italian sample PBW and NPO were mediators in the path from IU to worry, whereas only CA played a mediational role in the path from IU to somatic anxiety. Lastly, IU was observed to moderate only the association between NPO and worry, and only in the Italian sample. Some important cross-cultural, conceptual, and methodological issues raised from main results are discussed.