THE EFFECT OF NON-CONSCIOUS EXPOSURE ON AUTONOMIC ACTIVITY IN SOCIALLY PHOBIC PARTICIPANTS

Abstract

Social anxiety is characterized by an intense, overwhelming fear of being negatively evaluated by others in a variety of social situations. A threatening facial expression indicates hostility or dominance; therefore, it is a relevant cue for those suffering from social anxiety. From an evolutionary perspective, the fear response must be activated automatically - prior to conscious, cognitive processes - in order for members of a species to escape and avoid dangerous situations. Thus, a threatening facial expression should instinctively lead to an autonomic fear response in socially anxious individuals. The current study was the first to utilize masked threatening stimuli in order to measure physiological responses in social anxiety. It was hypothesized that in the clearly visible (unmasked) condition, individuals with and without social anxiety would show increased skin conductance responses to disgust faces compared to happy faces. In the masked condition by contrast, it was expected that only socially anxious individuals would show increased skin conductance responses to disgust faces, compared to happy faces, because the former stimuli are processed unconsciously. 36 socially anxious and 34 non-anxious control subjects were selected from a group of 493 potential participants who were administered two online questionnaires via email: The Social Interaction Anxiety Scale and the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale. Each participant received two series of stimuli in person: masked and visible. Skin conductance was continuously recorded during the two runs of stimuli. Immediately after each run, participants were asked to complete an awareness task and a subjective ratings task. The results confirmed the hypothesis that socially anxious individuals showed increased skin conductance responses to masked disgust faces compared to masked happy faces, whereas non-anxious individuals did not. These findings suggest that socially anxious individuals have unconscious mechanisms for responding to indicators of social threat.