Social Anxiety Can Make It Difficult to Read Facial Cues

Getting too wrapped up in trying to read social signals can be exhausting, even under the best conditions. But underscores that its especially difficult for people with social anxiety disorder (SAD). They come into every social experiencefrom a cocktail party to a watercooler chathyper-aware that theyre being subtly judged. And while a lot of signals in social situations are ambiguous, people with SAD tend to read those signals negativelyas proof of their worst-case scenarios.

Most research into SAD has focused on ambiguous verbal cuestimes when words can convey a spectrum of meaning. As expected, people with SAD often read that ambiguity negatively, as criticism or rejection. But a new study set out to see if that was true of nonverbal communication as well; specifically, researchers wanted to see how people with SAD read facial cues.

They used an intriguing method, using a video in which the facial expression slowly changed from pleasure (smiling) to disgust. Participants stopped the video as soon as they saw the change. (A control group watched a video with no change in expression.) The researchers also used a video that changed from disgust to pleasure. Before watching the video, participants played a rigged game designed to produce feelings of inclusion or ostracismresearchers wanted to see whether feeling left out primed them to read facial cues differently.

It turned out that people whod rated themselves high in social anxiety did perceive a smile turning to disgust quicker. But it wasnt just that they were more primed to detect any change in facial cues: When the process was run in reverse, they werent quicker to see disgust turning to pleasure. In other words, they were more primed to see good cues turn bad, but not the reverse.

While the findings arent definitivescience rarely isit does suggest some good advice for the socially anxious, which might be all of us at one time or another. Its relatively simple: Dont jump to conclusions. Rather than immediately reading ambiguous cues as negative, take a mental step back and wait for more information. Maybe youll be pleasantly surprised.