Welcome to the Social Anxiety and Specific Phobia (SASP) Research Group!

Emily Wolff, PhD candidate at Leiden University, wrote a paper about the inclusion of imperial citizens in the Dutch post-war welfare state.

From basic science to real-world interventions

Is blended care a feasible and effective treatment method for social anxiety in adolescence?

Recent years have seen a vibrant scholarship on health policy and politics. While much is now known about changes to health policies and institutions over time, this study finds that scholarship still lacks research on the linkages between health policies and health outcomes (Marmor & Wendt, 2012).…

The Social and Economic Psychology specialisation offers in-depth knowledge of a broad range of theories and research domains in this area, all concerning the way people’s social environment influences thoughts, feelings, and behaviour..

Receiving welfare benefits has a major impact on criminal behaviour. This has been demonstrated by Marco Stam, who defended his thesis on 20 January 2022.

LIACS is a partner in RISE_SMA, an interdisciplinary, international network combining excellent scholars and practitioners to enable vigorous knowledge sharing and to develop solutions for contemporary challenges for Social Media Analytics (SMA).

Observational, cognitive and physiological measurements in social contexts.

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process.

For this project we delve into children's digital media use during the transition from kindergarten to group 3 and investigate its impact on their social development.

On the occasion of prof Paul van der Heijden’s stepping down as Rector Magnificus and President of the Executive Board of Leiden University in 2013 the Chair bearing his name on Social Justice was established. It was a “farewell present” of the Leiden University to it’s Rector.

Written by a select international group of leading privacy scholars, Social Dimensions of Privacy endorses and develops an innovative approach to privacy.

This thesis, conducted in the framework of ERC Starting grant project BABYLON (PI: Caroline Waerzeggers), presents an investigation into Babylonian society, focusing on the city of Borsippa during Neo-Babylonian and early Persian rule (c. 620-484 BCE).

How can cardiovascular responses index challenge and threat motivational states? How do challenge and threat states shape, and are shaped by, social relations?

The rise of extremism in Europe has increased polarisation. The EU-funded DRIVE project, led by Tahir Abbas, Professor of Radicalisation Studies from Leiden University’s Institute of Security and Global Affairs, explores how social, structural, and individual factors contribute to radicalisation, offering…

Across cultures, parents help their children master the social and linguistic codes needed in adult life. Recent research on language socialization found important cross-cultural differences, pointing out the need for more diversity for a full understanding of this process. Deaf communities form…

A Diachronic Perspective on the Aegean

Exclusion elicits the same response in children as in adolescents and adults. That is what psychologist Mara van der Meulen found when she studied brain activity in primary schoolchildren. ‘What is new for us is that it is the same in childhood as later in life.’ Doctoral defence on 10 December.

In an unpredictable environment bacteria evolve the same strategy as shareholders who try to protect themselves against unpredictable swings in the stock market. Experimental evolution biologist Dr Bertus Beaumont published an article on this discovery on 5 November in the journal Nature.

New Approaches to Understanding the Eastern Mediterranean during Byzantine and Ottoman Times

How did the slave peculium function in the socio-legal context of the Roman Empire?

Today, 13 May 2024, Leiden University’s Executive Board is publishing the advice of the committee that investigated reports of unacceptable behaviour and breaches of academic integrity. These reports were about a professor from the university and their partner (a former member of the university staf…

The proposed research project examines the social role of two monk-bishops in seventh-century Egypt, Abraham of Hermonthis and Pesynthios of Koptos, by reconstructing their social networks on the basis of their archival documents.

Does the sitter have agency in the making of a photographic portrait? And if so how?

Social assistance and minimum income benefits are important instruments as a safeguard against low income and poverty. There have been major developments in minimum income benefits both in developed and developing countries over the last decades. Our study collects several empirical studies regarding…

A mosaic is the only image which can do justice to museums in the Caribbean. They are as diverse and plentiful as the many communities which form the cores of their organizations and the hearts of their missions. These profoundly social museums adopt participatory practices and embark on community engagement…

Which adolescents are more at risk of developing social anxiety disorder later in life?

Grassroots heritage initiatives and community engagement

In this episode we talk with Mara van der Meulen about prosocial behaviour and social exclusion in children. Van der Meulen also explores the role of genetics and environment in the development of social behaviour. To find out more about her research on why some children are beter able to develop their…

The author researched the motivations of bureaucrats to integrate refugees into welfare services even when they do not have any legal obligation to do so.

Prof. Sarah de Rijcke will succeed Paul Wouters as dean of Leiden University's Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FSW) from 1 January 2024. Paul Wouters will retire at the beginning of January.

What is the best living environment for dementia patients? To answer this question, Daniela Gawehns is using data mining methods to search through different types of data source. Her research is inadvertently building a bridge between two disciplines that are sometimes somewhat wary of each other.

Robotics, using social mechanisms like hormonal modulation, may accelerate our understanding of core sociality principles. By looking at social robotics through an evolutionary lens, we propose this field as a promising framework to investigate the fundamental bricks of sociality from an evolutionary…

The availability of indicators based on social media has opened the possibility to track the online interactions between social media users and scholarly entities.

Sanne Kellij and colleagues systematically reviewed 142 articles, examining evidence for three hypotheses on the relation between victimization and social information processing.

How is the development of physiological responses to social evaluation in adolescence affected by other normative developments, such as pubertal, socio-cognitive and psychosocial development? Are social anxiety and public speaking anxiety associated with characteristic patterns of stress responses…

On 24 January 2024, Vethaak defended the thesis 'Empirical Analysis of Social Insurance, Work Incentives and Employment Outcomes'. The doctoral research was supervised by Koen Caminada and Pierre Koning.

This article presents a systematic review aiming to provide a comprehensive overview of cybersecurity training methods and assess their effectiveness.

This paper written by Vydra and Kantorowicz answers the research question ‘What policy-relevant information does Twitter contain?’ as well as the research question ‘How does this information change between a period of normalcy and a period of crisis?’

The brain structure of young people with conduct disorder differs significantly from that of their typically developing peers. This is the conclusion of an international study that analysed more than two thousand MRI scans, recently published in The Lancet Psychiatry. Dr Moji Aghajani, one of the principal…