title: In the eye of the beholder: reduced threat-bias and increased gaze-imitation towards reward in relation to trait anger.
abstract: The gaze of a fearful face silently signals a potential threat's location, while the happy-gaze communicates the location of impending reward. Imitating such gaze-shifts is an automatic form of social interaction that promotes survival of individual and group. Evidence from gaze-cueing studies suggests that covert allocation of attention to another individual's gaze-direction is facilitated when threat is communicated and further enhanced by trait anxiety. We used novel eye-tracking techniques to assess whether dynamic fearful and happy facial expressions actually facilitate automatic gaze-imitation. We show that this actual gaze-imitation effect is stronger when threat is signaled, but not further enhanced by trait anxiety. Instead, trait anger predicts facilitated gaze-imitation to reward, and to reward compared to threat. These results agree with an increasing body of evidence on trait anger sensitivity to reward.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands. d.terburg@uu.nl
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Terburg
authors.forename: Henk
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Aarts
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Putman
authors.forename: Jack
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: van Honk
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger / Q000502:physiology*; D015982:Bias; D005239:Fear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007100:Imitative Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D007837:Latency Period, Psychological; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D012201:Reward; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult