Jumping to interpretations: Social anxiety disorder and the identification of emotional facial expressions

A small body of research suggests that socially anxious individuals show biases in interpreting the facial expressions of others. The current study included a clinically anxious sample in a speeded emotional card-sorting task in two conditions (baseline and threat) to investigate several hypothesize...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behaviour research and therapy 2007-03, Vol.45 (3), p.591-599
Main Authors: Mohlman, Jan, Carmin, Cheryl N., Price, Rebecca B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Analysis of Variance
Anxiety
Anxiety Disorders - psychology
Anxiety disorders. Neuroses
Bias
Biological and medical sciences
Case-Control Studies
Comprehension
Emotional disorders
Emotional expressivity
Emotional faces
Emotions
Face perception
Facial Expression
Facial expressions
Facial interpretation
Female
Humans
Interpretive bias
Male
Medical sciences
Personality traits
Phobia
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Recognition (Psychology)
Reference Values
Social anxiety
Social anxiety disorder
Social Perception
Statistics, Nonparametric
Studies
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Summary:A small body of research suggests that socially anxious individuals show biases in interpreting the facial expressions of others. The current study included a clinically anxious sample in a speeded emotional card-sorting task in two conditions (baseline and threat) to investigate several hypothesized biases in interpretation. Following the threat manipulation, participants with generalized social anxiety disorders (GSADs) sorted angry cards with greater accuracy, but also evidenced a greater rate of neutral cards misclassified as angry, as compared to nonanxious controls. The controls showed the opposite pattern, sorting neutral cards with greater accuracy but also misclassifying a greater proportion of angry cards as neutral, as compared to GSADs. These effects were accounted for primarily by low-intensity angry cards. Results are consistent with previous studies showing a negative interpretive bias, and can be applied to the improvement of clinical interventions.
ISSN:0005-7967
1873-622X
DOI:10.1016/j.brat.2006.03.007