Attention Bias to Emotional Expression: Variations Based on Anxiety Tendency and Depression Tendency

Abstract

Background: This study examined whether automatic attention bias toward emotional stimuli differs among individuals with varying anxiety and depression levels in the non-clinical population.Methods: A total of 494 participants from the community completed the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7). The dot-probe task was conducted to compare attention biases when emotional stimuli appeared before the target versus neutral stimuli did.Results: There were differences in attention bias based on the stimuli types, even among the non-clinical community. The anxiety tendency group showed attention bias towards positive expressions, while the depression tendency group showed attention bias toward negative expressions. The group with anxiety and depression tendencies showed mixed characteristics observed in both the anxiety and depression groups.Conclusions: This study showed that attention bias toward emotional stimuli is an information-processing bias influenced by an individual’s internal state. This study contributes to the understanding of attention bias differences among groups based on anxiety and depression tendencies in non-clinical population of various ages.