Arousal and social anxiety but not the emotional category influence visual search performance when using task-irrelevant emotional faces

The goal of the present study was to test the effects of emotional arousal elicited by emotional faces on visual search performance. In Experiment 1, facial expressions acted as distractors presented throughout the task. In Experiment 2, faces were presented only before the task. We found that the level of arousal elicited by faces can better describe their effects on visual search performance compared to their discrete emotional categories. In Exp1, faces with higher arousal ratings were more distracting, possibly because active inhibition is necessary to solve the task. However, in Exp2, higher levels of arousal resulted in better performance, possibly because they activate the arousal system, initiating readiness for action. We also showed that social anxiety diminishes attentional performance due to its influence on executive processing. This does not support the involvement of bottom-up attentional biases in the maintenance of social anxiety that many interventions seem to target.