Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 3, 2026

Social Isolation Model: A Noninvasive Rodent Model of Stress and Anxiety
Published on: November 11, 2022
The Perception of Facial Emotional Change in Social Anxiety: An ERP Study
Qi Zhang1, Guangming Ran2, Xueping Li1
1College of Preschool and Primary Education, China West Normal University, Nanchong, China.
Abstract:
Social anxiety is one of the psychological symptoms that most commonly occur in social interaction. Although previous behavioral studies have investigated the neutral-angry facial emotion change in social anxiety, none of the previous studies have, however, directly investigated the angry-neutral facial emotional change. Furthermore, less is known about the neural correlates of the facial emotion changes in individuals with social anxiety. The main goal of the present study was to explore the perception of facial emotional changes in individuals with social anxiety, using high temporal resolution event-related potential techniques. Behaviorally, accuracy in the angry-neutral facial emotional change trail was lower than that in the neutral-neutral case. Neurally, we found that the N170 amplitudes in angry-neutral facial emotional change trial were larger than those in the neutral-neutral case for high social anxiety (HAS) participants, probably reflecting that they might engage in more analytical processing of different facial elements. Interestingly, HSA participants showed smaller P200 left hemisphere amplitudes in the angry-neutral facial emotional change trial when compared with the neutral-neutral case, which suggested that they might have difficulties in processing emotions when they encounter these facial emotional changes. Finally, the late positive potential amplitudes in the neutral-angry and angry-neutral facial emotional change trials were smaller than those in the neutral-neutral case, regardless of the social anxiety. These results suggest that social anxiety influences the facial emotional changes mainly at an earlier stage of processing.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Social Anxiety Disorder
Introducing Social Perception
Role of Emotions in Social Life
Social Proof
Social Scripts
The Sense of Self: Reflected Self-Appraisal and Social Comparison

