Terror mismanagement: evidence that mortality salience exacerbates attentional bias in social anxiety

Figures & data

Table 1. Scores for initial bias (0–500 ms) and late-stage avoidance (0–3000 ms) for socially anxious and non-socially anxious individuals in the experimental and control conditions

		Experimental (MS)				Control (physical pain)
		High SA		Low SA		High SA		Low SA
Time interval (ms)	Face valence	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
0–500	Angry	0.6	0.07	0.54	0.06	0.54	0.09	0.55	0.07
0–500	Happy	0.57	0.06	0.53	0.08	0.53	0.07	0.54	0.09
0–1000	Angry	0.62	0.05	0.57	0.03	0.57	0.05	0.56	0.04
0–1000	Happy	0.56	0.07	0.56	0.06	0.57	0.07	0.56	0.06
1000–2000	Angry	0.62	0.1	0.55	0.07	0.58	0.11	0.58	0.09
1000–2000	Happy	0.6	0.1	0.6	0.05	0.61	0.09	0.59	0.07
2000–3000	Angry	0.52	0.06	0.51	0.07	0.53	0.06	0.52	0.06
2000–3000	Happy	0.51	0.06	0.52	0.05	0.52	0.06	0.51	0.04

Note: SA = social anxiety; bias scores represent the proportion of total fixations for that face pair type, with scores greater than 0.5 indicating vigilance for social threat, and scores less than 0.5 indicating avoidance of social threat; each angry or happy face was always paired with a neutral face.

Figure 1. Interaction between initial bias scores for socially anxious and non-socially anxious participants in the experimental and control conditions (p = .041).