All eyes on me?! Social anxiety and self-directed perception of eye gaze

Abstract

To date, only little is known about the self-directed perception and processing of subtle gaze cues in social anxiety that might however contribute to excessive feelings of being looked at by others. Using a web-based approach, participants (n=174) were asked whether or not briefly (300 ms) presented facial expressions modulated in gaze direction (0°, 2°, 4°, 6°, 8°) and valence (angry, fearful, happy, neutral) were directed at them. The results demonstrate a positive, linear relationship between self-reported social anxiety and stronger self-directed perception of others' gaze directions, particularly for negative (angry, fearful) and neutral expressions. Furthermore, faster responding was found for gaze more clearly directed at socially anxious individuals (0°, 2°, and 4°) suggesting a tendency to avoid direct gaze. In sum, the results illustrate an altered self-directed perception of subtle gaze cues. The possibly amplifying effects of social stress on biased self-directed perception of eye gaze are discussed.

The association between ruminative thinking and negative interpretation bias in social anxiety

“…Participants with a total SPIN score below 13 (N = 25, low social anxiety) or above 25 (N = 29, high social anxiety) were invited to participate in the study. The upper cut-off score is based on a previous validation study of the SPIN questionnaire (Sosic et al, 2008), whereas the lower cut-off score reflects interquartile distributions of a previous study from our research group (Schulze, Lobmaier, Arnold, & Renneberg, 2013). Due to technical problems, three participants had to be excluded from the analyses.…”

An evolutionary perspective on the co-occurrence of social anxiety disorder and alcohol use disorder

“…As such, higher levels of social anxiety are associated with faster orientation towards negative social cues, and more generally to threat-related social information (Buckner et al, 2010b; Mansell and Clark, 1999; Mogg et al, 2004; Schulze et al, 2013). Individuals with high degrees of social anxiety also show increased gaze avoidance when confronted with threatening facial cues, although critically this appears to be most pronounced under conditions of social evaluative threat (Buckner et al, 2010a; Mansell et al, 1999).…”

“…Adolescents and young adults with high levels of social anxiety may be particularly prone to alcohol use on account of the availability and high prevalence of this behavior in social contexts and settings in Western countries (Beck and Treiman, 1996; Single and Wortley, 1993), with implications for finding a partner. More research is needed to understand the temporal relationship between SAD and the onset of AUD.Higher degrees of social anxiety are associated with fixation to external cues of social threat, submissive behaviors (which entail avoidance of threat cues), and heightened inward attention to threat (Buckner et al, 2010b; Mansell and Clark, 1999; Mogg et al, 2004; Schulze et al, 2013). Alcohol has been found to reduce social anxiety and attentional bias to angry faces (Abrams et al, 2001; Stevens et al, 2008, 2009).…”

“…Higher degrees of social anxiety are associated with fixation to external cues of social threat, submissive behaviors (which entail avoidance of threat cues), and heightened inward attention to threat (Buckner et al, 2010b; Mansell and Clark, 1999; Mogg et al, 2004; Schulze et al, 2013). Alcohol has been found to reduce social anxiety and attentional bias to angry faces (Abrams et al, 2001; Stevens et al, 2008, 2009).…”

Eye Contact Judgment Is Influenced by Perceivers’ Social Anxiety But Not by Their Affective State

“…However, some affect-related traits, such as social anxiety, have been demonstrated to modulate individuals’ gaze perception. Individuals with social anxiety are prone to overestimate direct gaze from others (Gamer et al, 2011; Schulze et al, 2013; Bolt et al, 2014). Additionally, there are some studies investigating the influence of perceivers’ affect on their own gaze behavior.…”