Emotions shape how people understand and interact with others. Here, we review evidence on the relationship between anxiety—a future-oriented emotion characterized by negative valence, high arousal, and uncertainty—and mentalizing—the ascription of mental content to other agents. We examine three aspects of this relationship: how people with anxiety disorders perform on mentalizing tasks relative to controls; how situational anxiety alters mentalizing performance; and how autistic people, who experience the impacts of mentalizing differences, are at high risk of anxiety. We propose a bidirectional model for understanding how short-term and longer term anxiety are related to mentalizing. Key to this relationship is the aversive experience of uncertainty and the motivations that result from it.

中文翻译：

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焦虑与心智化：不确定性是自我中心主义的驱动因素

情绪塑造人们理解他人以及与他人互动的方式。在这里，我们回顾了焦虑（一种以负价、高唤醒和不确定性为特征的面向未来的情绪）与心智化（将心理内容归因于其他主体）之间关系的证据。我们研究了这种关系的三个方面：焦虑症患者相对于对照者在心理化任务中的表现如何；情境焦虑如何改变心智化表现；以及经历心理差异影响的自闭症患者如何面临高度焦虑的风险。我们提出了一个双向模型来理解短期和长期焦虑与心理化的关系。这种关系的关键是对不确定性的厌恶体验以及由此产生的动机。