Social anxiety is associated with alterations in heart rate but not gaze in a real social interaction

Abstract

Much of our current understanding of social anxiety rests on the use of simplistic stimulation material in laboratory settings. Latest technological developments now allow the investigation of eye movements and physiological measures during real interactions with adequate recording quality. Considering the wealth of conflicting findings on gaze behavior in social anxiety, the current study aimed at unraveling the mechanisms contributing to differential gaze patterns in a naturalistic setting in the general population and in social anxiety. We introduced participants with differing social anxiety symptoms to a waiting room situation while recording heart rate and electrodermal activity using mobile sensors and eye movements using mobile eye-tracking glasses. We observed fewer fixations on the head of the confederate in the initial waiting phase of the experiment. These head fixations increased when the confederate was involved in a phone call and head fixations were most pronounced during the actual conversation. In opposition to gaze-avoidance models of social anxiety, we did not observe any correlations between social anxiety and visual attention. Social anxiety was, however, associated with elevated heart rate throughout the entire experiment suggesting that physiological hyperactivity constitutes a cardinal feature of the disorder.

Looking behavior and potential human interactions during locomotion

“…Thus, high socially anxious individuals tended to look less at other people at a near distance than low socially anxious individuals. See also Hessels, Holleman, Cornelissen, Hooge, and Kemner (2018), who showed that looking behavior in dyadic conversation was related to social anxiety traits, and Rösler, Göhring, Strunz, and Gamer (2020), who showed no relation between social anxiety traits and looking behavior in a waiting room context. Although we have shown in our experiment that consistent differences in looking behavior across participants occur, we cannot attribute this to social anxiety, as we did not assess social anxiety traits.…”