Date of Award
2013
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Social Sciences
First Advisor
Graham, Steven
Keywords
Social Anxiety, Facial Recognition, Facial Expressions
Area of Concentration
Psychology
Abstract
The relationship between social anxiety and the identification of emotional facial expressions and words were examined in this study. The goal of this study was to determine whether highly socially anxious individuals would respond more quickly and accurately to negative facial expressions and investigate an attentional bias toward fear or anger. Seventy-six participants were divided into one of three groups: low, moderate, or high social anxiety. Participants were asked to classify facial expressions associated with happiness, anger, fear, and neutral as well as respond to word pairs associated with anger and fear. No significant differences were found for high social anxiety on reaction times and accuracies for emotional facial expressions. Results did reveal that highly socially anxious participants reacted more so to anger words than fear words. Future research is needed in order to determine if those with high social anxiety are more reactive to anger than fear across multiple stimuli.
Recommended Citation
Bickerton, Hayden, "The Effects of Social Anxiety on Recognition of Facial Expressions and Evaluation of Negative Emotions" (2013). Theses & ETDs. 4728.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/4728