Our approach

We look at social anxiety, narcissism, and post-traumatic reactions as the output of evolved regulatory systems rather than as malfunctions. Each system was shaped to solve a recurring social problem, such as avoiding costly conflict in a dominance hierarchy or keeping one's place in a group, and each is calibrated like a smoke detector: tuned to fire early and often, because missing a real threat once cost far more than many false alarms. Seen this way, symptoms are organized responses whose logic can be reverse-engineered, tested, and, when miscalibrated, recalibrated. The lens generates concrete predictions about which cues a socially anxious mind should overweight, why status loss should scar more than other stressors, and why grandiose narcissism should tie belonging to rank.

What we study

Three questions run through the lab. First, social trauma: when an adolescent or young adult is humiliated, excluded, or stripped of status among peers, which of these events leave lasting marks, on whom, and in which social settings. Second, social anxiety as the regulation of low status: a system tuned to dominance hierarchies that keeps people safe at the cost of keeping them small. Third, grandiose narcissism as the pursuit of status: self-worth that is contingent on rank, and what it costs when rank is threatened.

How we work

We use one pipeline across projects. We detect social threats as they happen with ecological momentary assessment, model how symptoms spread with symptom networks and idiographic models, test mechanisms with experimental rank manipulations such as the CyberStatus paradigm, and draw on large pooled survey datasets and linguistic analysis of narratives. Findings are translated into counselor-usable screening tools and brief, process-based interventions.

Why it matters

Social anxiety and peer trauma typically take shape in school, where they are visible to counselors long before they reach a clinic. We work with schools, counselors, and university support services, and we are building a process-based research clinic at Bar-Ilan University to support students at risk. We collaborate with Prof. Eva Gilboa-Schechtman (Bar-Ilan), Prof. Stefan G. Hofmann (Philipps-Universität Marburg), and Prof. Einat Levy-Gigi (Bar-Ilan).

Join us

We welcome M.A. and Ph.D. students and research assistants interested in social anxiety, social trauma in adolescence and young adulthood, and advanced research methods. Write to azoulay.roy@biu.ac.il with a CV and a short note on your interests.