Social Anxiety and Gaze Avoidance: Averting Gaze but not Anxiety
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Social Anxiety and Gaze Avoidance: Averting Gaze but not Anxiety Julia K. Langer • Thomas L. Rodebaugh
Published online: 23 May 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
Abstract Despite preliminary evidence that individuals with higher social anxiety tend to avoid eye contact during at least some social encounters, the function of this behavior remains unknown. Cognitive theories of social anxiety suggest that gaze avoidance may function as an attempt to avoid signs of social threat. However, it is unclear whether this behavior is effective for reducing anxiety and, if it is effective, whether this benefit is only present in the short-term. The goal of the current study was to test whether gaze avoidance is effective in reducing anxiety for individuals with higher social anxiety during short social conversations among peers. Participants completed a short social interaction with another undergraduate participant in which eye contact was manipulated halfway through the interaction. Recordings of the interactions were later coded for amount of eye contact; this allowed us to obtain an objective measure of adherence to the manipulation instructions. Participants were instructed to make either more or less eye contact, or continue as before. Being asked to make less eye contact was the most anxietyprovoking condition for participants with higher social anxiety. We propose, in line with previous research on safety behaviors, that avoiding eye contact in an effort to regulate state anxiety is an ineffective strategy over time for individuals with higher social anxiety. Therefore gaze avoidance may be a particularly important safety behavior to target in treatment for social anxiety disorder.
J. K. Langer T. L. Rodebaugh (&) Washington University in St. Louis, 1 Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1125, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. K. Langer e-mail: [email protected]
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Keywords Social anxiety Gaze avoidance Eye contact Social interaction Safety behaviors
Introduction Eye contact has been shown to serve a crucial role in social functioning (Dalton et al. 2005; Jawaid et al. 2008). For example, eye contact coordinates the timing of speech by indicating when one is listening or about to finish speaking (Kendon 1967), and approach versus avoidance tendencies are regulated through direct versus averted gaze (Hietanen et al. 2008). Further, atypical gaze behavior has been linked to higher social anxiety (Farabee et al. 1993; Horley et al. 2004; Moukheiber et al. 2010). In particular, those with higher social anxiety report greater fear and avoidance of eye contact (Schneier et al. 2011) and have been shown to avoid eye contact or the eye region of face pictures in some experimental paradigms (Farabee et al. 1993; Horley et al. 2004). Despite some documentation of an association between higher social anxiety and gaze avoidance, the function of this behavior remains to be tested. In the current study, we test the theory that for individuals with higher social anxie
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