State anxiety and emotional face recognition in healthy volunteers

Attwood, Angela S.; Easey, Kayleigh E.; Dalili, Michael N.; Skinner, Andrew L.; Woods, Andy; Crick, Lana; Ilett, Elizabeth; Penton-Voak, Ian S.; Munaf�, Marcus R.

Abstract

High trait anxiety has been associated with detriments in emotional face processing. By contrast, relatively little is known about the effects of state anxiety on emotional face processing. We investigated the effects of state anxiety on recognition of emotional expressions (anger, sadness, surprise, disgust, fear and happiness) experimentally, using the 7.5% carbon dioxide (CO2) model to induce state anxiety, and in a large observational study. The experimental studies indicated reduced global (rather than emotion-specific) emotion recognition accuracy and increased interpretation bias (a tendency to perceive anger over happiness) when state anxiety was heightened. The observational study confirmed that higher state anxiety is associated with poorer emotion recognition, and indicated that negative effects of trait anxiety are negated when controlling for state anxiety, suggesting a mediating effect of state anxiety. These findings may have implications for anxiety disorders, which are characterized by increased frequency, intensity or duration of state anxious episodes.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 3, 2017
• Online Publication Date: May 31, 2017
• Publication Date: May 31, 2017
• Deposit Date: Sep 23, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 26, 2022
• Journal: Royal Society Open Science
• Electronic ISSN: 2054-5703
• Publisher: Royal Society, The
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 4
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 160855
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160855
• Keywords: Multidisciplinary, anxiety, emotional face processing, emotion recognition, interpretation bias, 7.5% carbon dioxide
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10003832
• Publisher URL: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.160855
• Additional Information: Received: 2016-10-25; Accepted: 2017-05-03; Published: 2017-05-31