State anxiety and emotional face recognition in healthy volunteers

Autor: Angela S. Attwood, Kayleigh E. Easey, Michael N. Dalili, Andrew L. Skinner, Andy Woods, Lana Crick, Elizabeth Ilett, Ian S. Penton-Voak, Marcus R. Munafò
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Zdroj: Royal Society Open Science, Vol 4, Iss 5 (2017)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2054-5703
DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160855
Popis: High trait anxiety has been associated with detriments in emotional face processing. By contrast, relatively little is known about the effects of state anxiety on emotional face processing. We investigated the effects of state anxiety on recognition of emotional expressions (anger, sadness, surprise, disgust, fear and happiness) experimentally, using the 7.5% carbon dioxide (CO2) model to induce state anxiety, and in a large observational study. The experimental studies indicated reduced global (rather than emotion-specific) emotion recognition accuracy and increased interpretation bias (a tendency to perceive anger over happiness) when state anxiety was heightened. The observational study confirmed that higher state anxiety is associated with poorer emotion recognition, and indicated that negative effects of trait anxiety are negated when controlling for state anxiety, suggesting a mediating effect of state anxiety. These findings may have implications for anxiety disorders, which are characterized by increased frequency, intensity or duration of state anxious episodes.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals