Research Roundup 24: Revealing Research About the Human Condition

“Knowledge is gathering facts; wisdom is knowing which ones matter.”

– Maxime Lagacé

We compile facts, stuff our heads full of information, and mistake that gorging on facts for wisdom.

But facts only take us so far. Basic information is important, analysis of the data sometimes essential – but to be wise, to let intuition work and see clearly, we need bigger-picture understanding. To use the ‘bits’, we need to fit them into the whole. And in order to do that, we need to be able to discern what the ‘whole’ is.

Otherwise, like the boy who dissected a fly into wings, a thorax, eyes, and legs but then wondered where the fly itself had gone, modern humanity is in danger of discerning only the deracinated parts.

Bits of research intrigue us, but how do we fit these bits into an overall understanding of the human condition itself?

This question has never been more important, as we as a society seem to be becoming more and more reliant on ready-made frames of reference.

Tailored reality lenses

Recently I read an analysis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde discussing the reasons why it is now, apparently, often understood through a ‘queer studies lens’.¹

This struck me as odd. Maybe the famous novella was intended to be a commentary on repressed Victorian homosexuality… but was that all?

My point is, when we have a narrow window of preoccupation we tend to find what we’ve been trained to find and potentially miss out on broader meaning.

What’s more, we bring the preoccupations and biases of our own time and place and try to apply them to other times and places. This is almost the definition of hubris.

People trained to analyze amorphous reality through ready-made frames of reference may be similar to the blind men examining this strange new beast called the ‘elephant’.² One feels the leg and concludes, “Ah, this creature is like a living pillar of flesh.” Another finds the ear and surmises an elephant must be like a giant fan… and so on.

Tailor-made frames of reference blind with narrow vision as much as they illuminate. Viewing anything – filtering it through, say, a queer, Marxist, feminist (or any ‘ist’ you care to think of), or religious or atheist ‘lens’ – has us seeking and finding only what we’re looking for.

A gothic horror novel might be a tract of Victorian queerness and a dozen other things besides. A piece of art can work on many different levels and be understood in different ways depending on the obsessions or preoccupations of the person encountering that art.

Any given reaction might tell us more about the analyzer than the analyzed. And while an analysis of something might sound clever, when our whole frame of thought is fixed upon one thing, we miss the whole of that thing.

And there’s another problem.

Why didn’t they see as we see?!

Presentism (to add another ‘ism’!), the habit of viewing people in the past as necessarily having had the exact same preoccupations, norms, and values as we do (and if they didn’t, they must be lousy excuses for human beings!), is an example of how out-of-control subjectivity and bias can skew our perceptions.

Not to say that prepackaged frames of reference are never useful. If nothing else, they provide a sense of security for those who need it, the delicious feeling of being clever and the avoidance of having to think too much for ourselves.

But if we outsource our thinking too much we become little more than automatons.

Of course, we all fall prey to this pattern to some extent – I, of course, tend to view reality or human interaction through a psychological lens. And there are always all kinds of pressures and confluences, influences and coincidences that combine to produce or reflect reality. But it’s best, I guess, to at least be mindful of our own biases when we examine information and to try to see the bigger picture.

We’re bombarded with research and study snippets, but I think it’s important to try to fit any new (and old) psychological research into the wider understanding of what it means to be human.

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So with all that in mind, I’ll draw your attention to five recent studies and add my own take on what they might mean for the bigger picture. Of course, you may be able to add and understand a lot more than I do.

This month’s gems

This month we’re going to take a look at:

• The mindset that reduces social anxiety
• The type of language that signals the end of a romance
• Why some patients are demanding mental health diagnoses
• Why depressed people’s lives feel more out of control, and
• How we flourish when we embrace our fate.

Research piece one: The mindset that reduces social anxiety

A research study published in late 2025 found that social anxiety is shaped, in large part, by mindset. The research found that people with social anxiety tend to adopt a threat mindset, viewing social situations as dangerous.³

This leads to heightened self-focused attention, where individuals monitor the symptoms of their own anxiety, such as blushing or increased heart rate. This self-focus actually worsens social performance and reinforces the fear.

A key mechanism here is what the researchers call negative interpretation bias, whereby ambiguous social cues are often seen as critical, rejecting, or threatening in some other way.

This combines with post-event rumination, where interactions are replayed and mistakes exaggerated, to create a cycle that maintains anxiety.

Unfortunately, this kind of constant self-analysis – and the behaviours that result – can come across as offputting to others… thus reinforcing the cycle.

It’s difficult to stay present in a social interaction when you’re continually evaluating your performance and judging yourself.

In contrast, accepting that the impression you make on others isn’t something you can fully control can feel liberating.

Professor Liad Uziel, the study’s first author, reported:

“For most people, believing that others’ opinions can change motivates growth. But for individuals with high social anxiety, that constant possibility for change can feel overwhelming. Viewing others’ impressions as relatively stable may make the social world seem more predictable and less mentally draining.”

My take?

This all makes sense, and is kind of obvious. Or at least the first part is. Overanalyzing leads to more self-consciousness, which leads to less social external focus, which leads to more awkward social interactions… and so it continues.

Trying to be something might lead to that something… but it might also drive that something away. Trying too hard often backfires, as we know. So it is with being overly anxious to be socially engaging: it drives away natural interaction.

Socially adept people tend to forget themselves when socializing – the opposite of self-absorption. Rather, their focus is directed outward onto others and the situation as a whole. There is less separation, in their own minds, between them and others as they more readily get ‘in the zone‘ when socializing.

But what really interested me about this research was the apparent paradox.

Feeling better when you believe there’s nothing you can do

The research found that socially anxious individuals performed better in both experiments and real-life interactions when they assumed the impressions they made on others were stable. And this held good even if they assumed others would inevitably have a negative opinion of them!

This seems wild, right? Assuming the worst made people less anxious!

But if we think about it a little, it starts to make sense. Why?

Because it’s the uncertainty that drives anxiety.

Feeling that “haters gonna hate” no matter what can actually greatly increase social confidence and therefore leave others with a better impression of you.

The paradox is that we normally associate confidence with a ‘growth mindset‘, the feeling that “I can improve!” But, at least in the particular context of making a good impression on others, a fixed view can feel calming and build confidence. Even if it’s a pessimistic fixed view that “they’re not going to like me!”

In this context, letting go of control can actually lead to a greater sense of control. One of those rare times where feeling that you can do less or little actually helps you feel less anxious and fearful.

Letting go of trying to control impressions can also feel freeing, since there is less self-blame. It reduces stress and helps people stay present rather than overanalyzing and criticizing themselves, which can be unattractive to others. And feeling we can’t influence others can also help us care less what others think.

This mindset of certainty and feeling you have no influence either way makes social situations feel more predictable and less scary. Human beings really like certainty.

To become supremely confident, though, our clients need to not assume negativity but actually learn to relax with uncertainty so that they can deal with whatever happens with self-assurance and self-compassion. Strengthening the capacity to relax with uncertainty makes us stronger.

So ultimately what I draw from this research is yet more evidence that human beings love certainty, even if it’s negative certainty. And to transcend that, we need to cultivate the capacity to relax more with uncertainty.

Research piece two: The type of language that signals the end of romance

Some fascinating research discovered that relationship breakdown could very often be predicted (after the fact, in this case) by analyzing the type of language both partners used three months before the breakup.⁴

According to the study, language changed in two ways.

First, language shifted towards an I focus more so than a we and us focus. In other words, personal pronouns became more prevalent.

Second, more words were used that indicated what the researchers described as ‘cognitive processing’, including think, want, realize, need, depend, decide, reason, and wonder.

Together, these findings show that partners are considering intensely what’s happening to their relationship in the weeks and months before it breaks down.

The study’s lead author, Sarah Seraj, said:

“We don’t really notice how many times we are using prepositions, articles, or pronouns, but these function words get altered … when you’re going through a personal upheaval [in a way] that can tell us a lot about our emotional and psychological state.”

My take?

A few years back I read The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us by James W. Pennebaker, which showed a similar predictive pattern before relationship breakdown.⁵

It’s interesting to consider how we pick up shifts in communication subconsciously. After a breakup people may say things like “I just knew things weren’t right between us.”

I mean, sure, there may have been very obvious signs too, but we do, it seems, pick up information subtly without exactly being able to ‘put our finger on it’ – and it might be that we are picking up a shift in language style.

A relationship needs to be inclusive, else there is no relationship. We might be mindful sometimes of our clients’ pronoun usage and even encourage more inclusive discussions in therapy. Mind you, perhaps that’s to put the cart before the horse, because it seems that a tendency towards ‘we’ rather than ‘I’ pronouns stems naturally from things working well.

The language of the suicidal

I’ve also seen research showing that the closer a person gets to attempting suicide, not only does their thinking become more all-or-nothing or ‘absolutist’, but they too become more likely to use more pronouns relating to the self (I, me, mine) rather than those relating to others.^6,7

A shift in pronoun use may therefore indicate contemplation of any major upheaval, as the lead author said, but also perhaps a sense of aloneness. If one or both parties starts to feel disconnected in their relationship, it’s natural that the sense of I would amplify and we would diminish. And of course, before suicide many people also feel alone and disconnected.

So this kind of inward reflective stance seems common when we’re contemplating some major life change as well as when we’re feeling disconnected. And it does make sense that when we feel disconnected or even in pain the self becomes a bigger focus.

Research piece three: Why some patients are demanding a mental health diagnosis

According to a study consisting of surveys and interviews with almost 100 clinical psychologists, increasing numbers of patients want their own self-diagnosis confirmed.⁸

Young women with relatively high educational attainment and intensive social media activity are the most likely to go to a psychologist with their own diagnosis already clear in their minds, and autism and ADHD seem to be the most desired diagnoses.

Psychologists noted in interviews that patients frequently arrived with a considerable amount of “half-knowledge” gathered from online sources and peers. They often interpreted ordinary, everyday experiences as signs of underlying pathology, framing them as symptoms of deeper issues.

During interviews, these patients tended to shape their responses to align with the particular diagnosis they sought, even when accounts from third parties or developmental histories did not support that conclusion.

In other words, they weighted their responses towards the diagnosis they were after. And in general, they showed strong resistance to considering alternative explanations beyond their own self-diagnosis.

If they didn’t get the diagnosis they wanted, they sometimes reacted with anger or disappointment, telling the psychologist they were wrong and that they’d seek out other professional opinions. Some patients even threatened clinicians with negative reviews online or with complaints to authorities.

My take?

It’s interesting that patients were chasing more of the ‘neurodivergent’ diagnoses rather than, say, depression. They wanted lifelong, fixed, innate conditions.

According to this study at least, there seems to be a dearth of diagnosis hunters wanting schizophrenia or narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder.

So what might be ‘attractive’ to diagnosis hunters of this kind?

People have spoken about ADHD and autism as conditions containing ‘superpowers’, such as intense hyperfocus on passions, boundless creativity, rapid problem-solving, and resilience under pressure.

Of course, some patients desperately seeking a diagnosis may have correctly diagnosed themselves and simply be looking for affirmation and self-understanding.

But if we look closer, we can link the desire for diagnosis to the primal emotional needs we all share.

For example:

• Safety: When we have an explanation for something (even sometimes if a part of us knows it is not the real explanation), we tend to feel safer because knowledge tends to lend itself to better survival. So a diagnosis might (seem to) explain why life isn’t going the way we wanted it to. Patients want reasons for their difficulties because reasons help make reality feel less threatening.
• Status: While some people feel ashamed or embarrassed of a mental health diagnosis through fear of being stigmatized, others may derive a kind of recognition from others, a strange sense of status.
• Control: There may be a conscious or subconscious attempt to use a diagnosis as a way to control others, as in “You can’t say that to me; I am…” or “Because of my OCD you’ve all got to sit around the table exactly where I say!” or “I can’t do that because of my…” The diagnosis might be weaponized as a bludgeon to beat others through the exertion of control.
• Self-esteem: We all need to feel at least reasonably good about who we are, but if we can explain away our misdemeanours through a diagnosis – “I can’t help it I am neurodivergent!” – then the payoff might be a wonderful relief from personal responsibility.
• Connection to community: Feeling connected to a community is a vital human need. Nowadays (and nothing makes someone sound as old as using the term ‘nowadays!’) everything seems to be a community (“we members of the reclusive hermit community” and so on!). So it may be that there is a need for some sense of ‘joining the club’, whether that be in online forums or offline life. Community matters.

We try to meet our needs blindly, instinctively. When someone is doing something which seems weird or mysterious or even counterproductive, we can almost always link it back to an attempt to meet one or more of the primal needs.

Depressed people suffer from a lack of completion of many emotional and physical needs. This may in part cause their depression, but is in turn caused by depression, which can itself block the completion of highly important emotional needs.

The next study looks specifically at the need for control in depressed people.

Research piece four: Why depressed people’s lives feel more out of control

People experiencing depression often feel as though their lives are beyond their control. They may develop a sense that life lacks meaning, or that simply existing can lead to negative outcomes.

Research indicates that these feelings may stem from subtle changes in how individuals with depression perceive time and interpret their environment.⁹

Dr Rachel Msetfi and Dr Robin Murphy studied the phenomenon of people with depression often feeling like they have no control over their life and that things happen to them randomly or for no reason.

Researchers placed participants in a virtual house with a remote control that didn’t always work reliably. Participants (both depressed and non-depressed) had to figure out how much control they had over turning on music in different rooms.

When there were delays (like the music playing later or randomly), people with depression judged their control more accurately than others.

This finding was considered to support previous evidence that depressed people tend to experience time as passing more slowly and process environmental cues differently to people without depression.

Because subjective time moves more slowly for depressed people, they have the opportunity to notice more details in their environment – including things they can’t control. While the rest of us might just not notice (or care so much about) the things we can’t control, for depressed people they add up to a general sense of lack of control and often feelings of helplessness.

Dr Msetfi suggests that therapies like mindfulness training may work by refocusing attention in a healthier way.

My take?

A sense of control and autonomy is vital as part of overall mental health. Being hypersensitive to what you cannot control or believing you can’t control things you could in fact influence – that is, learned helplessness – is depressing.

It’s interesting that time seems to slow down for depressed people, and that may have to do with the passive mindset of depression. It makes sense to me that when you are just waiting for things to happen, time may seem slower. That sense of time dilation allows the depressed person to notice more aspects of the reality around them, and that reality is then filtered through a depressive lens.

Conversely, I suspect that the state of panic may speed up subjective time for people as all their systems go into hyperdrive: faster heart rate, muscles activated for fight or flight (even those who freeze still report racing thoughts), rapid breathing, and eyes darting from side to side.

Feeling out of control and caring about that is one thing that fuels depression. So one aspect of any depression treatment will be an examination of the locus of control of the client. I’ve created a free locus of control worksheet which you might find useful.

A sense of powerlessness (low locus of control) can diminish when we help our clients develop a powerful sense of purpose in life.

As the great psychiatrist and survivor of concentration camps Viktor Frankl said:

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”

And sometimes we just have to accept what happens.

Research piece five: We flourish when we embrace our fate

The idea here is that accepting everything in life, both good and bad, can improve your mental health and overall happiness.

The concept of amor fati (Latin for ‘love your fate’) comes from Friedrich Nietzsche, who believed that since suffering is unavoidable, we should learn to embrace it rather than fight it.

This next piece of research defines amor fati as “a positive attitude of joyfully embracing all parts of life, both good and bad”, which goes beyond just accepting difficult experiences.

In this study of 160 adults, those with higher amor fati showed better psychological adjustment, such as more positive emotions and less stress.¹⁰ Amor fati was linked to greater wellbeing (happiness, self-acceptance, positive relationships) and lower ill-being (depressive symptoms, anxiety, worry) over time, even after controlling for other factors such as optimism or grit.

These effects appear to be more than just general optimism; while optimism plays a role, amor fati still has unique predictive power for mental health outcomes such as stress, happiness, and personal growth.

The researchers also cite emerging evidence that amor fati may be useful across cultures, with studies spanning adults from different countries. This could help explain why some people experience a meaningful, happy, or psychologically rich life regardless of background and circumstances.

My take?

Amor fati doesn’t mean giving up or being defeatist and passive. In fact, it should encourage people to go for more in life and take reasonable risks. This kind of brave, stoic acceptance of whatever happens means actively engaging in life in a positive and meaningful way.

But as the researchers said, it’s not just accepting what happens but embracing it. I think this may overlap with the idea of ‘antifragility‘, in which a person doesn’t just survive their difficult circumstances but is actually personally strengthened and benefited by them.

I suspect that this mindset influences how adults cope and adjust psychologically partly because it helps prevent negative emotions from arising. But more than that, seeing challenges as a natural part of life, not something unfair or unusual, can help people feel more connected, less lonely, and more fulfilled.

So amor fati is more than just positive thinking or optimism or even resilience.

Perhaps related to amor fati is radical acceptance (RA). This is a skill from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) that helps reduce suffering by fully acknowledging reality as it is, without judging it, fighting it, or even necessarily approving of it.

Cultivating humour about oneself and life generally is, I suspect, a good way to develop amor fati too. The ability to laugh in the face of misfortune and to find the amusing within it helps us transcend the mere circumstances or our lives.

The Sufis have a phrase “in the World but not of the World.”

To me, this means engaging in life but not overassociating with it, so that a part of us at least can be transcendent, more than simply our circumstances and what happens to us.

Perhaps in this way, cultivating amor fati can enrich us as human beings.

Do you work with clients whose social anxiety is driven by relentless self-monitoring and fear of judgement? Uncommon Practitioners TV lets you watch advanced techniques applied with real clients in real sessions, so you can see exactly how to interrupt those cycles in practice. Explore Uncommon Practitioners TV.

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About Mark Tyrrell

Psychology is my passion. I've been a psychotherapist trainer since 1998, specializing in brief, solution focused approaches. I now teach practitioners all over the world via our online courses.

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