Biological Psychology 91 (2012) 263–269 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Biological Psychology journa l h o me page: www.elsevier.com/locate/biopsycho You don’t like me, do you? Enhanced ERP responses to averted eye gaze in social anxiety Julian Schmitz a , Corinna N. Scheel a , Alessandro Rigon b , James J. Gross b , Jens Blechert c,∗ a University of Freiburg, Department for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Germany b Department for Psychology, Stanford University, Stanford, USA c University of Salzburg, Department of Psychology – Clinical Psychology, Hellbrunnerstr. 34, 5020 Salzburg, Austria a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 16 February 2012 Accepted 11 July 2012 Available online xxx Keywords: Eye-gaze ERP P100 EPN LPP Social anxiety Attentional bias a b s t r a c t Social anxiety is associated with an attentional bias toward angry and fearful faces, along with an enhanced processing of faces per se. However, little is known about the processing of gaze direction, a subtle but important social cue. Participants with high or low social anxiety (HSA/LSA) observed eye pairs with direct or averted gaze while subjective ratings and event-related potentials (ERPs) were mea- sured. Behaviorally, all participants rated averted gaze as more unpleasant than direct gaze. Neurally, only HSA participants showed a trend for higher P100 amplitudes to averted gaze and significantly enhanced processing at late latencies (Late positive potential [LPP]), indicative of a specific processing bias for averted gaze. Furthermore, HSA individuals showed enhanced processing of both direct and averted gaze relative to the LSA group at intermediate latencies (Early posterior negativity [EPN]). Both general and specific attentional biases play a role in social anxiety. Averted gaze –a potential sign of disinterest – deserves more attention in the attentional bias literature. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Current theories of social anxiety (Clark and Wells, 1995; Rapee and Heimberg, 1997) suggest that socially anxious individuals have an attentional bias for negative social cues, such as facial displays of anger, that could indicate social rejection or threat. This bias is thought to fuel negative self-beliefs (e.g. “Others dislike me”), thereby playing a key role in the initiation and maintenance of social fears. If socially anxious individuals subsequently avoid these cues (e.g. by reducing direct eye-contact), they might be perceived as less warm and interested by others (Clark and Wells, 1995), creating a vicious cycle. The bulk of experimental research suggests a specific role for facial anger and other emotions in social anxiety (reviewed below). Less clear, however, is whether these negative attentional biases extend to more subtle social cues, such as gaze direction, which are much more common in every day life than open displays of anger but might still signal either social attention (direct gaze, Moukheiber et al., 2010; Schneier et al., 2011; Wieser et al., 2009) or disinterest/rejection (averted, Itier and Batty, 2009). Thus, eye gaze is more ambiguous when compared to distinct facial emotion and may therefore leave more room for anxiety specific ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +43 662 8044 5163; fax: +43 662 8044 745163. E-mail address: jens.blechert@gmail.com (J. Blechert). interpretation and processing biases (e.g. Clark and Wells, 1995). In the following sections, we review available evidence regarding the behavioral (dot-probe) and neural (event related potentials [ERPs]) processing of emotional faces and eye gaze in socially anxious individuals. 1.1. Behavioral responses to faces and gaze in social anxiety The most frequently employed approach for the study of atten- tional biases in social anxiety is the dot-probe paradigm. In this task, participants respond to a probe which – after a certain cue presenta- tion time – replaces one of two lateral stimuli (e.g. faces). Speeding or slowing of this response is taken as evidence for spatial atten- tion. While most studies which used dot-probe methods found a hyper vigilance (enhanced attention) for fearful and angry faces in social anxiety (e.g. Klumpp and Amir, 2009; Sposari and Rapee, 2007; Stevens et al., 2009), there is also research reporting either an avoidance of these faces (e.g. Gotlib et al., 2004; Pineles and Mineka, 2005) or an absence of group differences between socially anxious participants and controls (e.g. Chen et al., 2002). Since cue presenta- tions times varied between these studies, their discrepant findings could partially be explained by assuming a biphasic response pat- tern: After an early enhanced negative attention to social threat follows a consecutive later avoidance of the feared stimuli (hyper vigilance – avoidance hypothesis; see also Heinrichs and Hofmann, 2001). 0301-0511/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2012.07.004