Influence Of Acute Stress And Social Anxiety On Face Emotional Recognition

Research background and purpose:Social anxiety refers to the state of wanting to avoid all social situations or feel uncomfortable in any social interaction situation.In recent years,social anxiety has become a common psychological problem that can develop into social anxiety disorder without effective interventions.In social situations,situations such as public speaking or talking to strangers can be stressors that trigger acute stress in individuals.In social interactions,face emotions provide a wealth of information,and accurately identifying face emotions is an aspect of social cognitive ability.Therefore,this study wants to explore the following questions through EEG experiments:(1)Whether social anxiety level affects the allocation of attention resources in face emotion recognition;(2)Whether acute stress affects the allocation of attention resources in face emotion recognition;(3)Whether acute stress strengthens the effect of social anxiety level on face emotion recognition.Materials and Methods:This study was designed for 2(social anxiety: high social anxiety/low social anxiety),×2(acute stress: non-acute stress/acute stress),× 3(face mood type:calm/anger/fear)three-factor mixed experimental design.Firstly,according to the scores of the social communication anxiety scale,20 participants with high social anxiety and21 participants with low social anxiety were screened.Under laboratory conditions,the Trier social stress test was used to induce the stress state of the participants,and the face recognition task was completed in the state of stress and non-stress respectively,and120 calm faces,60 angry faces and 60 fearful faces were selected from the Chinese face emotion image library as face emotion recognition materials.The experimental program is written in E-prime 3.0.A 64-lead EEG amplifier and EEG software were used to collect behavioral data and EEG data.Behavioral data such as face recognition response and accuracy were analyzed and ERP components such as N170,P1,P2,LPP and other ERP components were analyzed.Results:The response of individuals to recognize face emotions in acute stress was significantly reduced,and the accuracy rate of recognizing face emotions was significantly improved.The P170,P1,P2 and LPP amplitudes of recognizing facial emotions under acute stress conditions were significantly increased,the P1 amplitudes of individuals with low social anxiety who recognized angry faces and fearful faces were significantly greater than those of calm faces,and there was no significant difference in the P1 amplitudes of recognizing three emotional faces in individuals with high social anxiety.Under stress,the P1 amplitude of individuals recognizing angry faces was significantly greater than that of calm faces,and the amplitude of LPP recognizing fearful faces was significantly greater than that of calm faces.Conclusions:Individuals with high social anxiety level will devote more attention resources to processing neutral facial emotions,and acute stress will prompt individuals to reallocate cognitive resources.There was no interaction between acute stress and social anxiety on facial emotion recognition.