Enhanced anger superiority effect in generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder

Chris Ashwin,Pawel Holas,Shanna Broadhurst,Andrzej Kokoszka,George A Georgiou,Elaine Fox

doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2011.11.010

Abstract

People are typically faster and more accurate to detect angry compared to happy faces, which is known as the anger superiority effect. Many cognitive models of anxiety suggest anxiety disorders involve attentional biases towards threat, although the nature of these biases remains unclear. The present study used a Face-in-the-Crowd task to investigate the anger superiority effect in a control group and patients diagnosed with either generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) or panic disorder (PD). The main finding was that both anxiety groups showed an enhanced anger superiority effect compared to controls, which is consistent with key theories of anxiety. Furthermore, both anxiety groups showed a differential pattern of enhanced bias towards threat depending on the crowd in the displays. The different attentional bias patterns between the GAD and PD groups may be related to the diverse symptoms in these disorders. These findings have implications for the diagnosis and treatment of anxiety.

Highlights

Humans sense more information in their environment than they can effectively process, so attention is necessary to filter out unnecessary information and to focus on relevant items
The present study revealed that all three groups showed the typical anger superiority effect, with faster and more accurate detection of angry faces versus happy faces
Responding rapidly and successfully to threat is critical for survival, so it is advantageous for threat-related information to be processed in a highly efficient manner compared to other types of information

Summary

Introduction

Humans sense more information in their environment than they can effectively process, so attention is necessary to filter out unnecessary information and to focus on relevant items. Many cognitive theories of anxiety propose that biases in attention play an important role in the causation and maintenance of anxiety disorders (Beck, 1976; Eysenck, 1992; Mathews, 1990; Williams, Watts, MacLeod, & Mathews, 1988, 1997). There is much evidence showing that high-trait anxious people and patients with clinical diagnoses of anxiety display attentional biases towards threatening information (for reviews see: Bar-Haim, Lamy, Pergamin, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & van Ijzendoorn, 2007; Mathews & MacLeod, 2005; Mogg & Bradley, 2004). Much of the evidence for attentional biases in high anxiety has emerged from a small number of experimental paradigms, including the Stroop task, dot probe and Face-in-the-Crowd tests. Ashwin et al / Journal of Anxiety Disorders 26 (2012) 329–336 type of stimuli for investigating biases towards threat in anxiety research

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