“For instance, when we are afraid that we might not be considered cool, attractive, or high-status, we don’t feel good. That fear is a profound emotion. It hurts.9 Everybody suffers from social anxiety from time to time, and every child has encountered a bully who used social anxiety as a weapon of torture, probably because behaving like a bully lessened the chances that the bully might become a target. That’s why people, even those who would normally be decent, tend to pile on to a victim of social anxiety torture. They’re so afraid of the very real pain that social anxiety brings that they can lose sight of their better natures for a moment. That’s not to say that all social emotions are negative. We can also experience camaraderie, sympathy, respect, admiration, gratitude, hope, empathy, closeness, attraction, and a world of other positive feelings when we interact with other people. On the negative side, we might feel fear, hostility, anxiety, resentment, repulsion, jealousy, and a desire to ridicule.”