Anxiety-related bias in the classification of emotionally ambiguous facial expressions.

Abstract

High- and low-trait socially anxious individuals classified the emotional expressions of photographic quality continua of interpolated ("morphed") facial images that were derived from combining 6 basic prototype emotional expressions to various degrees, with the 2 adjacent emotions arranged in an emotion hexagon. When fear was 1 of the 2 component emotions, the high-trait group displayed enhanced sensitivity for fear. In a 2nd experiment where a mood manipulation was incorporated, again, the high-trait group exhibited enhanced sensitivity for fear. The low-trait group was sensitive for happiness in the control condition. The mood-manipulated group had increased sensitivity for anger expressions, and trait anxiety did not moderate these effects. Interpretations of the results related to the classification of fearful expressions are discussed.

Acute Tryptophan Depletion in Healthy Volunteers Enhances Punishment Prediction but Does not Affect Reward Prediction

“…There is abundant empirical evidence implicating 5-HT in controlling aversion and potentiating anxiety-induced avoidance (Tye et al, 1977;Gray, 1982;Graeff et al, 1996). The hypothesis concurs with the observation that serotonergic neurotransmission is implicated in a range of mood and anxiety disorders (Young et al, 1985;Anderson et al, 1990;Deakin et al, 1990;Blier and de Montigny, 1999) that are characterized by enhanced anticipation of, and sensitivity to threat-related stimuli, punishment, and negative feedback (Beats et al, 1996;Elliott et al, 1997;Mathews and Mackintosh, 2000;Steffens et al, 2001;Richards et al, 2002;Murphy et al, 2003). Studies with healthy human volunteers have demonstrated potentiated processing of punishment-related signals after dietary depletion of the 5-HT precursor tryptophan (TRP; acute tryptophan depletion, ATD), particularly in vulnerable individuals.…”

A “How-To” Guide for Designing Judgment Bias Studies to Assess Captive Animal Welfare

“…People who are anxious or depressed, on the other hand, make more negative judgements about ambiguous information, recall more negative information, expect more negative events to occur in the future, and attend more readily to negative information (Bradley, Mogg, Millar, & White, 1995;MacLeod & Byrne, 1996;Mogg, Bradbury, & Bradley 2006;Richards et al, 2002;Richards, Holmes, Pell, & Bethell, 2013). Bad feelings can have adaptive emotional underpinnings in a threatening environment: increased arousal in anxiety speeds responses to threat (Mogg, Bradley, & Williams, 1995); social withdrawal in depression conserves energy and may keep you away from harm (Nettle & Bateson, 2011).…”

Valence and magnitude ambiguity in feedback processing

“…This is understandable as the value of ambiguous information was undetermined, which may generate negative feelings such as anxiety (Lerner, Li, Valdesolo, & Kassam, 2015). The P3 finding might share underlying mechanisms similar to those of the interpretation bias in anxiety, that is, a tendency to interpret ambiguous facial expressions as negative (Blanchette & Richards, 2003; Richards et al., 2002). In line with this idea, some previous studies have reported a smaller P3 effect among anxious individuals (Bauer, Costa, & Hesselbrock, 2001; Huang et al., 2009).…”

“…As pointed out above, it has been well‐established that high‐anxious people tend to interpret ambiguous information negatively (Amir et al., 2005; Richards et al., 2002). For instance, veterans with more severe posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms treated ambiguous outcome as less rewarding (Myers et al., 2013).…”