Social Anxiety Fastens Gaze Detection: An Experimental Study Using Visual Search Task

Abstract

This study examines the attentional bias hypothesis for individuals with social anxiety (SA). Socially anxious individuals were hypothesized to exhibit attentional bias towards the gaze direction of others. Participants with high (n=30) and low (n=29) SA detected a direct or averted gaze stimulus in a crowd with distractor stimuli (i.e., stare-in-the-crowd paradigm). Results indicated that the detection speeds regarding direct gazes were similar in both groups. However, the high SA group exhibited quicker detection of averted gazes. These findings suggest that SA decreases attentional bias that preferentially detects direct gazes over averted gazes. Functions of SA and directions for further research are discussed.