Emotional stroop performance for masked angry faces: it's BAS, not BIS

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Affective Science
• Neuroscience

Background:

• Theoretical models link heightened trait anxiety and Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) activity to vigilance towards angry faces.
• Contrasting evidence suggests heightened anger and Behavioral Activation System (BAS) activity predict vigilant responses to angry faces.
• Social anxiety is hypothesized to predict avoidance of angry faces.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between anxiety traits, BIS/BAS activity, and attentional biases towards angry faces.
• To examine the role of social anxiety in the avoidance of angry faces.
• To differentiate the effects of masked versus unmasked emotional Stroop tasks on cognitive-emotional processing.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a masked emotional Stroop task to assess attentional biases.
• Employed an unmasked emotional Stroop task for comparison.
• Measured trait anxiety, BIS/BAS activity, and social anxiety.

Main Results:

• The masked emotional Stroop task confirmed that heightened trait anxiety/BIS activity and heightened anger/BAS activity predict vigilant responding to angry faces.
• Social anxiety significantly predicted avoidance of angry faces in the masked Stroop task.
• The unmasked emotional Stroop task did not yield reliable relations between these variables and attentional biases.

Conclusions:

• Findings support the role of heightened anger and BAS activity in vigilant attention to angry faces, alongside trait anxiety and BIS.
• Social anxiety is associated with avoidance of angry faces, particularly under conditions of limited conscious awareness.
• The dissociation between masked and unmasked Stroop tasks highlights the unconscious nature of these cognitive-emotional processes.