What you want to avoid is what you see: Social avoidance motivation affects the interpretation of emotional faces

This study investigated the effects of habitual social approach and avoidance motivation on the classification of facial expressions of different visual clarity. Participants (N = 78) categorized partially masked emotional faces expressing either anger or happiness as positive or negative. Participants generally tended to interpret the facial expressions in a positive way. This positivity effect was reduced when persons were highly avoidance motivated. Social avoidance motivation predicted fewer positive and more negative interpretations in the least visible condition that provided extremely little information on the facial expression. Thus, people high in social avoidance motivation are likely to have anticipated angry faces as the facial stimuli offered only minimal information. The results for social approach motivation did not reach statistical significance. To conclude, it seems that persons who are most afraid of having negative social interactions (i.e., those high in social avoidance motivation), anticipate and interpret social information in the most negative way, which could lead to the reinforcement of the avoidance motivation. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-014-9459-5 Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-110044 Accepted Version Originally published at: Nikitin, Jana; Freund, Alexandra M (2015). What you want to avoid is what you see: Social avoidance motivation affects the interpretation of emotional faces. Motivation Emotion, 39(3):384-391. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-014-9459-5 MOTIVATION AND PROCESSING EMOTIONAL FACES 1 Running Head: MOTIVATION AND PROCESSING EMOTIONAL FACES 1 2 3 4 What You Want to Avoid is What You See: 5 Social Avoidance Motivation Affects the Interpretation of Emotional Faces 6 7 Jana Nikitin & Alexandra M. Freund 8 University of Zurich 9 10 11 12 13 Author Note 14 Jana Nikitin, University of Zurich, Department of Psychology, Binzmuehlestrasse 14/11, 8050 15 Zurich, Switzerland; E-mail: [email protected]. Alexandra M. Freund, University of 16 Zurich, Department of Psychology and University Research Priority Program Dynamics of 17 Healthy Aging, Binzmuehlestrasse 14/11, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland; E-mail: 18 [email protected]. Correspondence concerning this article may be addressed to either 19 of the authors. 20 This research was supported by a grant of the funding by Suzanne and Hans Biäsch 21 Foundation for Applied Psychology, Switzerland (principle investigator: Jana Nikitin). We thank 22 the Life-Management team for helpful discussions of the work reported in this paper. 23 24 MOTIVATION AND PROCESSING EMOTIONAL FACES 2 Abstract 25 This study investigated the effects of habitual social approach and avoidance motivation 26 on the classification of facial expressions of different visual clarity. Participants (N = 78) 27 categorized partially masked emotional faces expressing either anger or happiness as positive or 28 negative. Participants generally tended to interpret the facial expressions in a positive way. This 29 positivity effect was reduced when persons were highly avoidance motivated. Social avoidance 30 motivation predicted fewer positive and more negative interpretations in the least visible 31 condition that provided extremely little information on the facial expression. Thus, people high 3225 This study investigated the effects of habitual social approach and avoidance motivation 26 on the classification of facial expressions of different visual clarity. Participants (N = 78) 27 categorized partially masked emotional faces expressing either anger or happiness as positive or 28 negative. Participants generally tended to interpret the facial expressions in a positive way. This 29 positivity effect was reduced when persons were highly avoidance motivated. Social avoidance 30 motivation predicted fewer positive and more negative interpretations in the least visible 31 condition that provided extremely little information on the facial expression. Thus, people high 32 in social avoidance motivation are likely to have anticipated angry faces as the facial stimuli 33 offered only minimal information. The results for social approach motivation did not reach 34 statistical significance. To conclude, it seems that persons who are most afraid of having 35 negative social interactions (i.e., those high in social avoidance motivation), anticipate and 36 interpret social information in the most negative way, which could lead to the reinforcement of 37 the avoidance motivation. 38