Abstract
Social anxiety disorder is a common psychiatric disorder. The gaze of others is known to frequently induce social anxiety. We conducted a gaze detection experiment to examine the effects of social anxiety on autonomic response, namely heart rate (HR) response. We used the maximum HR deceleration between 0 s and 3 s after stimulus onset as an indicator of emotional stress. Participants were assigned to a high social anxiety (HSA) or low social anxiety (LSA) group on the basis of cut-off scores indicative of clinical levels of stress as per the Japanese version of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS-J). Our results showed that HR deceleration was greater for the HSA compared with the LSA group. Moreover, the higher the LSAS-J score was, the greater the increase was in HR deceleration (correlation coefficient rs = 0.52, p < 0.01). Our results suggest that the eye gaze of others can be processed as a threat in individuals with a high tendency towards social anxiety.
Highlights
Information obtained via eye gaze is important in human social interactions and communication
We divided the participants into two groups, those with high social anxiety (HSA, n = 7) and those with low social anxiety (LSA, n = 8), on the basis of the cut-off point at which social anxiety disorders (SAD) is probable (LSAS-J score of 60, see Table 1)
We found no significant correlation between LSAS-J and reaction times (RTs)
Summary
Information obtained via eye gaze is important in human social interactions and communication. How to cite this paper: Tsuji, Y., & Shimada, S. Anxious Tendencies Affect Autonomic Responses during Eye Gaze Perception. Shimada serves as a social signal that conveys the direction of an individual’s attention and interest (Baron-Cohen, 1995). Individuals with social anxiety disorders (SAD) tend to perceive this signal as a threat and often seek to avoid the eye gaze of others (Greist, 1995). SAD is one of the most common psychiatric disorders with a lifetime prevalence and lifetime morbid risk of 10.7% and 13.0%, respectively (Kessler, Petukhova, Sampson, Zaslavsky, & Wittchen, 2012). SAD and major depressive disorder (MDD) often occurs together, and SAD precedes MDD in approximately 70% of patients (Kessler, Stang, Wittchen, Stein, & Walters, 1999)
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