Acute anxiety impairs accuracy in identifying photographed faces

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Forensic Science

Background:

• Accurate facial recognition is vital for security.
• The impact of acute anxiety on face-matching performance is not fully understood.
• Understanding anxiety's effect on facial identification is critical for security-related tasks.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how acute anxiety affects face-matching accuracy.
• To determine if anxiety influences the ability to identify genuine face matches or detect non-matches.
• To assess the implications of anxiety-induced performance changes for security applications.

Main Methods:

• Participants (N=28) completed the Glasgow Face Matching Test under two conditions: normal air and air enriched with 7.5% carbon dioxide (CO2) to induce acute anxiety.
• The test measures the ability to match photographed faces.
• Performance was assessed by analyzing hits (correct matches) and false alarms (incorrectly identifying non-matches as matches).

Main Results:

• Anxiety significantly degraded performance in identifying correct face matches (hits).
• Anxiety did not significantly affect the rate of false alarms (incorrectly identifying non-matches).
• This dissociation suggests anxiety specifically impairs confirming a match, not disconfirming one.

Conclusions:

• Acutely induced anxiety impairs the accuracy of matching photographed faces.
• The findings highlight a dissociation between identifying a match and identifying a non-match under anxiety.
• Heightened inaccuracy in facial identification may occur during acute anxiety, posing challenges for security.