title: Angry-happy interpretations of ambiguous faces in social anxiety disorder.
abstract: Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is characterized by a tendency to interpret ambiguous social cues as negative. Here we tested whether interpretation of ambiguous faces differs between participants with SAD and non-anxious controls. Twenty-seven individuals with SAD and 21 non-anxious control participants completed an emotion recognition task in which they judged ambiguous morphed faces as happy or angry. Participants with SAD judged a higher proportion of the faces as angry compared to non-anxious participants, and were slower to judge faces as angry compared to happy, while no such reaction time bias manifested in the control group. Finally, happy judgments were slower in the SAD group compared to the control group, while angry judgments were faster in the SAD group compared to the control group. These findings provide evidence for a negative bias in resolving emotional ambiguity in facial expressions among individuals with SAD.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69987, Israel.
authors.forename: Keren
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Maoz
authors.affiliation: School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69987, Israel.
authors.forename: Sharon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Eldar
authors.affiliation: Section on Bipolar Spectrum Disorders, Emotion and Development Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Joel
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Stoddard
authors.affiliation: Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience, Emotion and Development Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Pine
authors.affiliation: Section on Bipolar Spectrum Disorders, Emotion and Development Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Ellen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Leibenluft
authors.affiliation: School of Psychological Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv 69987, Israel; The Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
authors.forename: Yair
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Bar-Haim
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger / Q000502:physiology*; D005149:Facial Expression; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006240:Happiness; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D000072861:Phobia, Social / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012938:Social Perception; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Ambiguous facial expressions; Anger; Emotion; Interpretation bias; Social phobia