The effects of anxiety on the interpretation of emotion in the face–voice pairs

Abstract

Anxious individuals have been shown to interpret others' emotional states negatively. Since most studies have used facial expressions as emotional cues, we examined whether trait anxiety affects the recognition of emotion in a dynamic face and voice that were presented in synchrony. The face and voice cues conveyed either matched (e.g., happy face and voice) or mismatched emotions (e.g., happy face and angry voice). Participants with high or low trait anxiety were to indicate the perceived emotion using one of the cues while ignoring the other. The results showed that individuals with high trait anxiety were more likely to interpret others' emotions in a negative manner, putting more weight on the to-be-ignored angry cues. This interpretation bias was found regardless of the cue modality (i.e., face or voice). Since trait anxiety did not affect recognition of the face or voice cues presented in isolation, this interpretation bias appears to reflect an altered integration of the face and voice cues among anxious individuals.