Avoidance in Social Anxiety: Specific for Social Cues?

Abstract

Avoidance behavior is a major maintaining factor for social anxiety. However, the exact role is still unclear. We administered an Approach Avoidance Task in 19 participants, participants were measured for social anxiety and rated the emotional valence of each picture presented during the AAT. During the AAT participants have to respond to pictures of faces (angry/happy) or food (rotten/fresh), by either pushing a joystick away (avoidance) or pulling it towards them (approach). We found an avoidance tendency for angry faces and an approach tendency with happy faces. There was no significant association between social anxiety and avoidance/approach tendencies towards social cues, as well as non-social cues. There was no relation with the degree of social anxiety and the explicit evaluation of faces. Finally, no correlation between avoidance tendencies on the AAT and explicit evaluation of emotional faces was found.