Emotion sensitivity and self‐reported symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder across the lifespan: A population‐based sample approach

Summary & key facts

This study looked at whether people with more generalized anxiety symptoms are worse at noticing small differences in other people's facial emotions. About 7,200 people aged 10 to 96 completed a web-based test where they chose which of two faces looked more happy, angry, or fearful, and they also filled out a short anxiety questionnaire. The researchers found that higher anxiety scores were linked with poorer ability to tell differences in happiness, anger, and fear. That link held after accounting for age and sex and did not change across the lifespan. Older people showed lower emotion sensitivity but also reported lower anxiety. The authors say more research is needed to learn whether chan

Key facts:

• About 7,200 people between the ages of 10 and 96 completed the study online and answered a short questionnaire about generalized anxiety symptoms.
• The emotion test presented pairs of faces and asked people to pick which face looked more happy, more angry, or more fearful, measuring how sensitive they were to emotional differences.
• People with higher self-reported generalized anxiety symptoms were worse at detecting differences in all three emotions: happiness, anger, and fear.
• The link between anxiety symptoms and poorer emotion sensitivity remained after the researchers accounted for participants' age and sex.
• The relationship between anxiety and emotion sensitivity did not change with age; the effect was similar across the lifespan.
• Older participants tended to be less sensitive to emotional facial expressions but also reported lower levels of anxiety, and the study cannot tell whether one causes the other.

Abstract

In the largest study of its kind, GAD symptoms were associated with impaired ES performance across three emotion types. Future research should explore the connection between anxiety symptoms, cognitive processing, and social processing to better characterize the mechanisms of how GAD is linked with both social and non-social information processing. Future work may also look at if ES is related over time to changes in anxiety, making it a promising target for intervention.

Topics

Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development Neuroscience and Music Perception

Categories

Experimental and Cognitive Psychology Psychology Social Sciences

Tags

Anger Anxiety Anxiety sensitivity Association (psychology) Clinical psychology Cognition Developmental psychology Environmental health Generalized anxiety disorder Happiness Medicine Population Psychiatry Psychology Psychotherapist Social anxiety Social psychology

Conditions & symptoms

Anxiety Anxiety or worry