Visual avoidance of faces in socially anxious individuals: The moderating effect of type of social situation

Patients with social anxiety disorder appear to display aberrant gaze behavior across a variety of social situations. In contrast, the gaze behavior of high socially anxious (HSA) individuals from the community seems to depend on the type of situation and the aberration might be limited to gaze avoidance. This study investigated the differential effect of social situation—a face-viewing task and a public speaking task—on gaze behavior in HSA participants from a community sample. Participants’ eye movements were tracked using a wearable eye tracker. Two aspects of gaze behavior were measured: (1) gaze avoidance was assessed by total fixation time, fixation counts, and mean fixation time on faces; (2) hypervigilance was assessed by scan path length and mean distance between fixations. The results confirmed a moderating effect of task on total (though not mean) fixation time on faces and fixation counts. Compared to low socially anxious participants, HSA participants looked less frequently (hence shorter) at the audience during the speech only. This indicates that visual avoidance in HSA individuals does not occur by default, but only when risks of (negative) social consequences are perceived. High and low socially anxious participants showed no difference in hypervigilance in either situation.