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Social Anxiety Disorder is Associated with Reduced Eye Contact During Conversation Primed for Conflict

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Abstract

Eye contact is important for successful social interactions (e.g., Dalton et al. in Nat Neurosci 8:519–526, 2005. doi:10.1038/nn1421), suggesting that gaze avoidance could be damaging for social functioning. Gaze avoidance has been proposed to relate to higher social anxiety (Schneier et al. in Compr Psychiatry 52:81–87, 2011. doi:10.1016/j.comppsych.2010.04.006), yet studies utilizing behavioral observation have produced mixed findings (Farabee et al. in J Res Personal 27:365–376, 1993. doi: 10.1006/jrpe.1993.1025; Walters and Hope in Behav Ther. 29:387–407, 1998. doi:10.1016/S0005-7894(98)80039-7; Weeks et al. in J Soc Clin Psychol 30:217–249, 2011. doi:10.1521/jscp.2011.30.3.217). The goal of the current study was to clarify the mixed findings in the literature utilizing a clinical sample. Participants completed interactions with another participant. We assessed eye contact using independent coding. Participants with social anxiety disorder made lower levels of eye contact relative to participants without social anxiety disorder during a conversation primed for conflict. Integrating these findings with previous work, we theorize that social anxiety relates to eye contact when there is an impairing level of social anxiety and the interaction is primed for conflict.

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Notes

  1. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5 (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association 2013) does not have a “generalized” specifier, instead it includes a “performance only” specifier.

  2. Due to expected cell counts less than 5, only the Black and White racial groups could be compared by group. Similarly, we were not able to compare the number of Hispanic participants between groups due to the low frequency of Hispanic ethnicity, which was assessed separately from racial group.

  3. This procedure was also used in a previous, unpublished study (Langer and Rodebaugh 2013a, b) and similarly high levels of reliability were achieved (ICC = .88).

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the undergraduate research assistants who coded the interaction videos and conducted experimental sessions, including Lucas Delort, Elizabeth Riley, Ali Hong, Meghan Bryne, Caroline Kay, and Samuel Shefler.

Funding

This study was funded in part by Grant MH090308 (NIMH) to Thomas L. Rodebaugh, and UL1 RR024992 (NIH) to Washington University in St Louis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. One Veterans Drive, Minneapolis, MN, 55417, USA

    Julia K. Langer

  2. Brain and Psychological Sciences Center, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia

    Michelle H. Lim

  3. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Katya C. Fernandez

  4. Department of Psychology, Washington University in St Louis, One Brookings Drive, St Louis, MO, 63130, USA

    Julia K. Langer, Michelle H. Lim, Katya C. Fernandez & Thomas L. Rodebaugh

Authors
  1. Julia K. Langer
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  2. Michelle H. Lim
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  3. Katya C. Fernandez
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  4. Thomas L. Rodebaugh
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Correspondence to Michelle H. Lim.

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Conflict of Interest

Julia K. Langer, Michelle H. Lim, Katya C. Fernandez and Thomas L. Rodebaugh declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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No animal studies were carried out by the authors for this article.

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The contents do not represent the views of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or the United States Government.

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Langer, J.K., Lim, M.H., Fernandez, K.C. et al. Social Anxiety Disorder is Associated with Reduced Eye Contact During Conversation Primed for Conflict. Cogn Ther Res 41, 220–229 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-016-9813-x

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