(A lack of) effects of acute social stress on attentional bias to threat

Abstract

Attentional biases toward or away from emotionally evocative stimuli have been well documented and are known to be clinically relevant, making it important to understand how various factors contribute to them. Some work has suggested that acute stress modulates attentional biases, but this work has produced inconsistent results. For example, many studies have found that stress enhances attentional bias, others that stress decreases attentional bias, and others still that there is no effect of stress at all. Methodological differences may explain these inconsistencies. For example, discrepancies exist between studies in participant sex (e.g., mixed sample vs. all men) and in the type of attentional bias paradigm. We addressed these gaps by examining the effects of an acute social stressor (vs. control) on attentional bias assessed via facial dot probe, focusing on potential sex differences in these effects (N = 141). We found that, overall, participants were significantly biased towards threat, but biases did not differ by stress condition or sex. These findings help to clarify the existing discrepancy in the literature, as we found that stress exerts little if any effect on attentional bias assessed via a facial dot probe.