Abstract
Social anxiety is one of the psychological symptoms that most commonly occur in social interaction. Although previous behavioral studies have investigated the neutral-angry facial emotion change in social anxiety, none of the previous studies have, however, directly investigated the angry-neutral facial emotional change. Furthermore, less is known about the neural correlates of the facial emotion changes in individuals with social anxiety. The main goal of the present study was to explore the perception of facial emotional changes in individuals with social anxiety, using high temporal resolution event-related potential techniques. Behaviorally, accuracy in the angry-neutral facial emotional change trail was lower than that in the neutral-neutral case. Neurally, we found that the N170 amplitudes in angry-neutral facial emotional change trial were larger than those in the neutral-neutral case for high social anxiety (HAS) participants, probably reflecting that they might engage in more analytical processing of different facial elements. Interestingly, HSA participants showed smaller P200 left hemisphere amplitudes in the angry-neutral facial emotional change trial when compared with the neutral-neutral case, which suggested that they might have difficulties in processing emotions when they encounter these facial emotional changes. Finally, the late positive potential amplitudes in the neutral-angry and angry-neutral facial emotional change trials were smaller than those in the neutral-neutral case, regardless of the social anxiety. These results suggest that social anxiety influences the facial emotional changes mainly at an earlier stage of processing.
Highlights
Social anxiety refers to a state of anxiety that results from the presence of interpersonal evaluation in social interaction (Pierce, 2009)
Follow-up analyses confirmed the that amplitudes in the angry-neutral facial emotional change trial were larger than those seen in the neutral-neutral facial emotional change trial for high social anxiety (HSA) participants [angry-neutral: M = –2.73 μV, SD = 4.76 μV; neutral-neutral: M = –1.63 μV, SD = 4.57 μV; t(12) = –3.28, p = .007] but not for low social anxiety (LSA) [angry-neutral: M = –1.65 μV, SD = 3.66 μV; neutral-neutral: M = –1.78 μV, SD = 3.91 μV; t(13) = 0.32, p = 0.751] participants (Figures 4, 5A)
The electrophysiological data showed larger N170 amplitudes in the angry-neutral facial emotional change trial than those in the neutral-neutral case for HSA participants, implying that they might be engaged in more analytical processing of different facial elements
Summary
Social anxiety refers to a state of anxiety that results from the presence of interpersonal evaluation in social interaction (Pierce, 2009). Social anxiety is a milder form of social phobia, it is one of the most common forms of anxiety (Pierce, 2009; Kross et al, 2014). It is associated with poor interpersonal relations, such as negative, aversive, or exclusionary experiences with others (Mathew et al, 2011). It begins during one’s childhood or adolescence, with a mean age of onset between 14 and 16 years (Iverach and Rapee, 2014). Individuals with high social anxiety (HSA) show enhanced vigilance to stimuli associated with social threat, such as angry faces (Kirsch, 2015).
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