Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Bauer, Gordon

Keywords

Social Anxiety, Facial Expressions, Emotions, Psychology

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

This study had four primary goals. First, it examined the relationship between social anxiety and how individuals classify seven emotional expressions (e.g., anger, contempt, disgust, fear, joy, neutral, and sadness). Another goal was to examine whether going through a microexpression training program would improve accuracy at identifying facial expressions. Further, it also examined whether this training could reduce the tendency for individuals with high social anxiety to interpret ambiguous facial expressions as threatening. Lastly, it explored whether an individual’s level of social anxiety would influence how they respond to the training. The current study included 45 participants who completed a self-report measure of social anxiety followed by a pre-test in which they classified emotional expressions, a training program in which they received instructions on how to identify each emotional expression, and a post-test. The hypothesis that there would be a relationship between social anxiety and classification of emotional expressions was not supported. The hypothesis that the microexpression training program would improve individuals’ accuracy at identifying emotional expressions was supported. However, it was not possible to examine whether the training program reduced negative interpretation biases of individuals with high social anxiety, as no such biases were found. Although it was not possible to examine whether the microexpression training reduced interpretation biases, it was found that the training program was more effective for individuals with high social anxiety. Specifically, individuals with high social anxiety experienced greater improvements in accurately identifying expressions of joy. Such findings suggest that microexpression training may be especially beneficial for individuals with high social anxiety. This could have positive implications for their social interactions, as being able to accurately assess others’ expressions is important for social functioning.

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