Does anxiety induced by social interaction influence the perception of bistable biological motion?

• DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103277
• Publication Date: 2021-02-25T04:28:25Z
• Authors: Wei Peng; Emiel Cracco; Nikolaus F. Troje; Marcel Brass
• Keywords: Attentional Bias; Biological motion

When observing point light walkers orthographically projected onto a frontoparallel plane, the direction in which they are walking is ambiguous. Nevertheless, observers more often perceive them as facing towards than away from them. This phenomenon known "facing-the-viewer bias" (FTV). Two interpretations of facing-the-viewer bias exist literature: top-down and bottom-up interpretation. Support for interpretation comes evidence that social anxiety correlates with FTV bias. However, relationship between inconsistent across studies correlation has mostly been obtained relatively small samples. Therefore, first aim current study was to provide strong test hypothesized large sample 200 participants recruited online. In addition, second further extend accounts by investigating if also related autistic traits. Our results replicate bias, showing people indeed tend no interaction (tau = −0.01, p .86, BF 0.18) or traits −0.0039, .45, found. As such, our data cannot confirm