Relationship between social anxiety and perceived trustworthiness

Impact of Face Masks and Viewers’ Anxiety on Ratings of First Impressions from Faces

“…In experiment 2, we further observed that social anxiety was only negatively correlated with approachableness but not with trustworthiness evaluation. These findings are largely in agreement with previous observation of reduced face approachableness ratings (Campbell et al, 2009;Kivity & Huppert, 2016) but comparable trustworthiness ratings for neutral faces (Cooper et al, 2014) in individuals with higher social anxiety compared to nonanxious individuals. Given that socially anxious people tend to interpret neutral face as uncertainty and ambiguity around a person's intention and emotion (Kuckertz et al, 2017), and approachableness rating is directly related to assessors' expectancy of own social action (Willis et al, 2013), it is likely that social anxiety would be more sensitive to face approachableness rather than trustworthiness evaluation.…”

“…Given different anxiety subtypes may show different impact on facial traits judgement (e.g., Willis et al, 2013 ; Cooper et al, 2014 ; Kivity & Huppert, 2016 ), in Experiment 2 we further examined to what extent participants’ social anxiety level would affect their judgements of first impression traits for unfamiliar faces with and without face masks. As the analysis in Experiment 1 did not reveal significant impact of face masks on attractiveness and dominance judgements, we only measured participants’ face approachableness and trustworthiness ratings in Experiment 2.…”

“…While some studies have reported that trait and state anxiety showed no effect on the judgement of trustworthiness ( Mattarozzi et al, 2015 ) and approachableness ( Willis et al, 2013 ), others have observed that individuals with higher levels of trait anxiety tend to perceive neutral faces as less trustworthy ( Willis et al, 2013 ). Similarly, in comparison with nonanxious participants, individuals with higher social anxiety have been reported to show either little difference in judging trustworthiness in neutral ( Cooper et al, 2014 ) and happy faces ( Gutiérrez-García et al, 2018 ), or reduced trustworthiness rating for neutral ( Meconi et al, 2014 ), angry, and disgusted faces ( Gutiérrez-García & Calvo, 2016 ). They also tend to rate faces as less approachable regardless of expressions ( Campbell et al, 2009 ; Kivity & Huppert, 2016 ).…”

Social Anxiety and Interpretation Bias

“…Second, those in the positive-scale assessment condition subsequently reduced negative interpretation bias of ambiguous facial expressions. The first result supports previous studies on interpretation bias for facial expressions (Cooper et al., 2014; Heuer, Lange, Isaac, Rinck, & Becker, 2010; Jusyte & Schönenberg, 2014; Lange, Allart, Keijsers, Rinck, & Becker, 2012; Mohlman, Carmin, & Price, 2007; Vassilopoulos, 2011; Winton, Clark, & Edelmann, 1995) and is consistent with cognitive-behavioral models of SAD and extended previous studies that have used other measures of interpretation bias, such as questionnaires comprising ambiguous scenarios (e.g., Amir et al., 1998; Beard & Amir, 2010; Murphy et al., 2007), videos (Perowne & Mansell, 2002), auditory scenarios (Muris, Huijding, Mayer, Remmerswaal, & Vreden, 2009), nonverbal behaviors (Veljaca & Rapee, 1998), and social vignettes (Constans et al., 1999). However, it contrasts with the findings of several studies on interpretation bias for facial expression (Douilliez, Yzerbyt, Gilboa-Schechtman, & Philippot, 2012; Philippot & Douilliez, 2005; Schofield, Coles, & Gibb, 2007).…”

Memory advantage for untrustworthy faces: Replication across lab- and web-based studies

“…This enabled us to explore the influence of individual differences in social anxiety on memory, which has been found in previous research to be enhanced, impaired or unaffected for facial expressions [ 19 , 25 ]. In the present study, however, we found no indication of a significant relationship between social phobia scores and memory performance for facial expressions varying in trustworthiness which indicates no memory bias (e.g., [ 19 ]; c.f., [ 56 ] for role of social anxiety on trustworthiness judgments). It should be noted, however, that the social anxiety scores were obtained in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has caused social withdrawal due to reasons other than social anxiety (i.e., social distancing, fear of infection).…”