Center for Psychology at University of Porto, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto, Portugal.
Center for Psychology at University of Porto, Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences, University of Porto, Portugal.
J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2021 Mar;70:101610. doi: 10.1016/j.jbtep.2020.101610. Epub 2020 Aug 22.
Fixation on another person's eye-region may be an effective measure of one's level of empathy. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that this type of empathy measure may not be appropriate for individuals with high levels of social anxiety, since avoidance or hypervigilance attentional biases towards emotional faces are frequent in this condition.
Using eye-tracking, we measured fixation time on the eye-region of another person in participants with low vs. high social anxiety, and we correlated this measure with empathy levels. In a second eye-tracking task, the two groups of participants were presented with pairs of emotional-neutral faces to determine the presence of attentional biases.
While participants with low social anxiety showed an association between empathy and fixation time on the other person's eyes, the association was null for participants with high social anxiety. Attentional biases towards emotional faces were absent in high social anxiety, but social anxiety correlated negatively with fixation on the eye region.
Our sample was made up of Psychology undergraduates, and this may have had an influence on gaze behavior towards the eye region.
Fixation on the eye region is not a valid measure of empathy in high social anxiety, possibly due to systematic eye-region avoidance.
注视他人的眼部区域可能是衡量同理心水平的有效方法。本研究旨在验证以下假设，即对于社交焦虑程度较高的个体，这种同理心测量方法可能并不合适，因为在这种情况下，个体通常会回避或过度关注情绪面孔，从而产生注意力偏向。
我们通过眼动追踪技术，测量了低社交焦虑和高社交焦虑个体注视他人眼部区域的时间，并将这一测量指标与同理心水平进行了关联分析。在第二个眼动追踪任务中，两组参与者被呈现一对情绪面孔和中性面孔，以确定是否存在注意力偏向。
低社交焦虑组的参与者表现出同理心与注视他人眼睛时间之间存在关联，而高社交焦虑组的参与者则不存在这种关联。高社交焦虑组不存在对情绪面孔的注意力偏向，但社交焦虑程度与注视眼睛区域呈负相关。
我们的样本由心理学本科生组成，这可能会对注视眼部区域的行为产生影响。
在社交焦虑程度较高的情况下，注视眼部区域并不是衡量同理心的有效方法，这可能是由于个体对眼部区域的系统回避。
