Finch Emma C, Iverach Lisa, Menzies Ross G, Jones Mark
a Centre for Emotional Health, Department of Psychology , Macquarie University , North Ryde , NSW , Australia.
b Discipline of Behavioural and Community Health Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences , The University of Sydney , Lidcombe , NSW , Australia.
Cogn Emot. 2016 Nov;30(7):1370-9. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2015.1065794. Epub 2015 Jul 24.
Death anxiety is a basic fear underlying a range of psychological conditions, and has been found to increase avoidance in social anxiety. Given that attentional bias is a core feature of social anxiety, the aim of the present study was to examine the impact of mortality salience (MS) on attentional bias in social anxiety. Participants were 36 socially anxious and 37 non-socially anxious individuals, randomly allocated to a MS or control condition. An eye-tracking procedure assessed initial bias towards, and late-stage avoidance of, socially threatening facial expressions. As predicted, socially anxious participants in the MS condition demonstrated significantly more initial bias to social threat than non-socially anxious participants in the MS condition and socially anxious participants in the control condition. However, this effect was not found for late-stage avoidance of social threat. These findings suggest that reminders of death may heighten initial vigilance towards social threat.
死亡焦虑是一系列心理状况背后的一种基本恐惧，并且已被发现会增加社交焦虑中的回避行为。鉴于注意偏向是社交焦虑的一个核心特征，本研究的目的是考察死亡凸显（MS）对社交焦虑中注意偏向的影响。参与者为36名社交焦虑个体和37名非社交焦虑个体，他们被随机分配到死亡凸显组或对照组。一项眼动追踪程序评估了对社交威胁性面部表情的初始偏向以及后期回避情况。正如预期的那样，处于死亡凸显条件下的社交焦虑参与者比处于死亡凸显条件下的非社交焦虑参与者以及处于对照组的社交焦虑参与者表现出对社交威胁明显更多的初始偏向。然而，在后期对社交威胁的回避方面未发现这种效应。这些发现表明，对死亡的提醒可能会提高对社交威胁的初始警觉性。
