The browser you are using is not supported by this website. All versions of Internet Explorer are no longer supported, either by us or Microsoft (read more here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/windows/end-of-ie-support).

Please use a modern browser to fully experience our website, such as the newest versions of Edge, Chrome, Firefox or Safari etc.

Biases in Visual Selective Attention : Trait Anxious Individuals Avert Their Gaze From Unpleasant Stimuli

På svenska

Author

Summary, in English

Cognitive models of anxiety postulate that anxious individuals are inclined to pay more attention to negative than to positive emotional visual stimuli. The main aim of the present dissertation was to test this prediction, employing a measure of the direction of gaze. In studies I, II and III the participants were shown pairs of angry and happy faces on a screen. In Study IV the stimuli were pleasant and unpleasant pictures. None of the studies could confirm the hypothesis of a positive relation between anxiety and the tendency to orient one’s attention towards unpleasant stimuli. In studies I and III, anxious individuals were instead found to avert their gaze from angry faces. A meta-analysis of Studies I, II, III and IV, with a total of 405 participants, suggested the same conclusion, even if Studies II and IV failed to show such an effect. A review of the empirical evidence on anxiety and visual selective attention raised the possibility that other experiments have confounded stimulus emotionality and stimulus valence, and that the results from these experiments are consistent with the notion that anxiety is connected with a tendency to pay more attention to emotional stimuli (positive and negative), rather than to a tendency to pay more attention to negative stimuli. The present studies considered this potential confound and found that anxious individuals avert their gaze from negative stimuli, more than from positive stimuli. Study III also showed that an individual can avert his or her gaze from the position of angry faces without having any conscious knowledge of doing so.

Publishing year

2002

Language

English

Document type

Dissertation

Publisher

Department of Psychology, Lund University

Topic

  • Psychology

Keywords

  • Psychology
  • eye-movements
  • attentional biases
  • Anxiety
  • attention
  • Psykologi

Status

Published

Supervisor

  • [unknown] [unknown]

Defence date

21 February 2002

Defence time

10:15

Defence place

Samarkand

Opponent

  • Brendan P. Bradley