Gaze direction differentially affects avoidance tendencies to happy and angry faces in socially anxious individuals

Abstract

a b s t r a c tIncreasing evidence indicates that eye gaze direction affects the processing of emotional faces in anxious individuals. However, the effects of eye gaze direction on the behavioral responses elicited by emotional faces, such as avoidance behavior, remain largely unexplored. We administered an Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT) in high (HSA) and low socially anxious (LSA) individuals. All participants responded to photographs of angry, happy and neutral faces (presented with direct and averted gaze), by either pushing a joystick away from them (avoidance) or pulling it towards them (approach). Compared to LSA, HSA were faster in avoiding than approaching angry faces. Most crucially, this avoidance tendency was only present when the perceived anger was directed towards the subject (direct gaze) and not when the gaze of the face-stimulus was averted. In contrast, HSA individuals tended to avoid happy faces irrespectively of gaze direction. Neutral faces elicited no approach-avoidance tendencies. Thus avoidance of angry faces in social anxiety as measured by AA-tasks reflects avoidance of subject-directed anger and not of negative stimuli in general. In addition, although both anger and joy are considered to reflect approach-related emotions, gaze direction did not affect HSA's avoidance of happy faces, suggesting differential mechanisms affecting responses to happy and angry faces in social anxiety.

Drawn to danger: trait anger predicts automatic approach behaviour to angry faces

“…For instance, people high in social anxiety have been found to display markedly stronger avoidance reactions to social threats (e.g. Heuer, Rinck, & Becker, 2007;Roelofs et al, 2010). In the present article, we highlight another source of individual differences in automatic approach and avoidance tendencies that may reverse people's default avoidance reaction to social threats, namely, trait anger.…”

“…More specifically, we expected participants with high levels of trait anger to respond faster with approach responses rather than avoidance responses to angry faces with direct eye gaze. Angry faces with direct gaze tend to be recognised more quickly , and engage the amygdala more (Adams, Gordon, Baird, Ambady, & Kleck, 2003), and do not signal motivational affordances to interact (Roelofs et al, 2010). As such, angry faces with direct eye gaze constitute a stronger social threat than angry faces with averted eye gaze.…”

On angry approach and fearful avoidance: The goal-dependent nature of emotional approach and avoidance tendencies

“…Studies have shown that perceiving angry faces can activate approach (Aarts et al, 2010;Wilkowski & Meier, 2010), avoidance (Marsh, Ambady, & Kleck, 2005;Seidel, Habel, Kirschner, Gur, & Derntl, 2010), or neither (Heuer, Rinck, & Becker, 2007;Roelofs et al, 2010).…”

Social embodiment in directional stepping behavior

“…So, when valence was task irrelevant, no differential preference for either affect-response combination (sometimes called an ''affective Simon effect,'' e.g., Duscherer et al 2008) was observed. On the other hand, Roelofs et al (2010b) found increased avoidance tendencies with angry faces when responding to an emotion-irrelevant cue (color of the face), but only in a group of high-socially anxious individuals, and not with low-anxious individuals. Also, studies using affective verbal stimuli have found that taskirrelevant word meanings may indeed be processed (e.g., Duscherer et al 2008).…”

“…When task-irrelevant stimulus features are embedded in an approach-avoidance task, potential effects of these features on response execution are less susceptible to task demands and to demand characteristics (e.g., Roelofs et al 2010b). In fact, a number of recent studies have used the approachavoidance methodology to assess automatic influences of task-irrelevant stimulus features on performance.…”