2025/07/17 by Friederike Elisabeth Hedley, Hilary Hei Ting Ngai, Jingwen Jin · 1 voice
Psychology · #Mental Health Research Topics #Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
paper · doi:10.1037/abn0001018
= 61) took part in an emotion ensemble judgment task, where they decided whether the ensemble, consisting of emotional faces ranging from fearful to happy, was on average more fearful or happier. Eye movements were tracked to measure visual attention allocation, and AP was measured using the Penn State Worry Questionnaire. The anxiety group made more fearful judgments than the control group, and this judgmental bias was related to AP. Eye-tracking results revealed that the anxiety group paid more overt attention to happy stimuli than fearful stimuli, demonstrating fear avoidance. Finally, fear avoidance was associated with a higher proportion of fearful judgment. This study disclosed how individuals with anxiety assess multiple emotional evidence pieces to form a judgment, indicating overt avoidance of threatening evidence but higher weighing of such evidence in subsequent decisions. These findings support the threat-avoidance model in emotion ensemble judgments and the importance of reducing the saliency of threatening evidence during intervention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).