Interpreting facial expressions: The influence of social anxiety, emotional valence, and race

Social anxiety is posited to be linked to interpersonal skills deficits, including accurate interpretation of emotional social cues, such as facial expressions. However, empirical support for an interpersonal skills deficit model of social anxiety is lacking. Studies of information processes indicate that socially anxious individuals may be more accurate at identifying threatening facial expressions in particular. In the present study, undergraduates who self-identified as Caucasian (N = 158) completed a task assessing facial expression accuracy. Relevant parameters such as emotional valence as well as race of the target were assessed. As predicted, socially anxious individuals were overall more accurate at identifying facial expressions. Whereas participants were more accurate overall at identifying Caucasian faces, there were differences in the extent of this discrepancy based on emotional valence. Implications for integration of information processing data and evolutionary models of social anxiety are discussed.