Fear and fearfulness potentiate automatic orienting to eye gaze

Abstract

This study examines whether fearful and happy expressions enhance orienting to eye gaze, and the contribution of individual differences in trait fearfulness. Participants carried out a spatial orienting task in which they were presented with neutral, happy, and fearful expressions with eyes gazing either toward or away from a target letter (T or L). The expressions appeared either 300 ms or 700 ms before the onset of the target letter. After both time intervals there was a gaze congruency effect: Response times were faster when the eyes gazed toward (congruent condition) rather than away (incongruent condition) from the location of the target. The congruency effect was larger for fearful faces compared to neutral faces, but not happy faces compared to neutral faces. Furthermore, at a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between cue and target, the magnitude of the effect of fear on orienting increased with trait fearfulness. The results are discussed in relationship to findings of attentional bias for threat-related stimuli.