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In the Eye of the Beholder: Reduced Threat-Bias and Increased Gaze-Imitation towards Reward in Relation to Trait Anger

The gaze of a fearful face silently signals a potential threat's location, while the happy-gaze communicates the location of impending reward. Imitating such gaze-shifts is an automatic form of social interaction that promotes survival of individual and group. Evidence from gaze-cueing studies...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Terburg, David, Aarts, Henk, Putman, Peter, van Honk, Jack
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2012
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3281963/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22363632
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0031373
Descripción
Sumario:The gaze of a fearful face silently signals a potential threat's location, while the happy-gaze communicates the location of impending reward. Imitating such gaze-shifts is an automatic form of social interaction that promotes survival of individual and group. Evidence from gaze-cueing studies suggests that covert allocation of attention to another individual's gaze-direction is facilitated when threat is communicated and further enhanced by trait anxiety. We used novel eye-tracking techniques to assess whether dynamic fearful and happy facial expressions actually facilitate automatic gaze-imitation. We show that this actual gaze-imitation effect is stronger when threat is signaled, but not further enhanced by trait anxiety. Instead, trait anger predicts facilitated gaze-imitation to reward, and to reward compared to threat. These results agree with an increasing body of evidence on trait anger sensitivity to reward.