Attentional Bias To Positive Emotional Faces Of Individuals With Different Trait Anxiety Levels

With the advent of the age of national anxiety,anxiety has become an important topic in psychological research,and the attentional bias of anxious individuals has attracted more and more researchers’ attention.Many previous studies have investigated the attentional bias towards negative stimuli of anxious individuals.It has been found that anxious individuals are more likely to capture negative stimuli,and then exhibit an attentional bias to negative stimuli.However,in real life,there are a variety of different information,some negative,and some positive.This information may appear alone,or at the same time.At present,there is still controversy about whether anxiety individuals have an attentional bias towards positive stimuli.It is not clear about the characteristics of attentional bias in anxious individuals when positive and negative stimuli occur at the same time.Therefore,this study investigated the attentional bias towards positive emotional faces of individuals with different levels of trait anxiety under two different conditions,the first presents neutral and positive emotional faces simultaneously,while the second presents negative and positive emotional faces simultaneously.In experiment 1,a dot probe task combined with eye movement technique was used to investigate the attentional bias to positive emotional faces of individuals with different trait anxiety levels under neutral-positive conditions.The reaction time results found that high-trait anxiety individuals exhibited no attentional bias to positive emotional faces,while low-trait anxiety individuals exhibited an attentional bias to positive emotional faces.The results of eye movement measures were consistent with the results of reaction time,which verified the experimental hypothesis.In experiment 2,a dot probe task combined with eye movement technique was used to investigate the attentional bias to positive emotional faces of individuals with different trait anxiety levels under negative-positive conditions.Both the results of reaction time and eye movement measures found that both high and low trait anxiety individuals had no attentional bias to positive emotional faces,which verified the experimental hypothesis.This study draws the following conclusions:When neutral and positive emotional faces are presented simultaneously,high-trait anxiety individuals have no attentional bias to positive emotional faces,while low-trait anxiety individuals exhibit a greater attentional bias to positive emotional faces.When negative and positive emotional faces are presented simultaneously,both high and low trait anxiety individuals have no attentional bias to positive emotional faces.