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Social anxiety and detection of facial untrustworthiness: Spatio-temporal oculomotor profiles.
- Source :
-
Psychiatry research [Psychiatry Res] 2018 Apr; Vol. 262, pp. 55-62. Date of Electronic Publication: 2018 Feb 20. - Publication Year :
- 2018
-
Abstract
- Cognitive models posit that social anxiety is associated with biased attention to and interpretation of ambiguous social cues as threatening. We investigated attentional bias (selective early fixation on the eye region) to account for the tendency to distrust ambiguous smiling faces with non-happy eyes (interpretative bias). Eye movements and fixations were recorded while observers viewed video-clips displaying dynamic facial expressions. Low (LSA) and high (HSA) socially anxious undergraduates with clinical levels of anxiety judged expressers' trustworthiness. Social anxiety was unrelated to trustworthiness ratings for faces with congruent happy eyes and a smile, and for neutral expressions. However, social anxiety was associated with reduced trustworthiness rating for faces with an ambiguous smile, when the eyes slightly changed to neutrality, surprise, fear, or anger. Importantly, HSA observers looked earlier and longer at the eye region, whereas LSA observers preferentially looked at the smiling mouth region. This attentional bias in social anxiety generalizes to all the facial expressions, while the interpretative bias is specific for ambiguous faces. Such biases are adaptive, as they facilitate an early detection of expressive incongruences and the recognition of untrustworthy expressers (e.g., with fake smiles), with no false alarms when judging truly happy or neutral faces.<br /> (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
- Subjects :
- Adult
Anxiety physiopathology
Anxiety psychology
Cues
Deception
Emotions
Facial Expression
Female
Fixation, Ocular
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Male
Phobia, Social physiopathology
Smiling psychology
Spatio-Temporal Analysis
Students psychology
Young Adult
Attentional Bias
Eye Movements physiology
Facial Recognition
Phobia, Social psychology
Trust psychology
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1872-7123
- Volume :
- 262
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Psychiatry research
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 29407569
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2018.01.031