Study: The socially anxious avoid looking at BOTH strangers & surroundings

Scientists say we should focus more on increased avoidance, not hyper-vigilance.

Dec. 27, 2021

Study: The socially anxious avoid looking at BOTH strangers & surroundings

People with social anxiety disorder (SAD) face a lot of predicaments that can make daily life an uphill battle, especially when it comes to interacting with people they're not familiar with in unfamiliar environments. From getting nervous in crowded areas, to not making eye contact with strangers in confined spaces, the daily nuances of life are a real internal challenge.

As someone with SAD, this writer can attest to those difficulties. Alas, a lot of people with SAD learn to adapt, or at least hide it.

While previous studies suggest that people with SAD become more hyper-vigilant in social situations, a new study published on PLoS One points to increased avoidance instead.

Eyes looking nowhere in particular.

IMAGE: Rostyslav Savchyn / Unsplash

The study, conducted by researchers at Bournemouth University in the UK, looked at a total of 30 participants made up of university students. Each student was asked to sit in a seminar room and complete some visual search tasks while wearing specially-fitted glasses that they were told would track their eye movements.

However, the true purpose of the study was to subject the students (ranging from high social anxiety to low) to 'real life' scenarios of coming into contact with strangers. The researcher in the seminar room would pretend they forgot something in another room and would momentarily step out. Then enters a 'confederate', which in psychology terms is actually a researcher posing as another study participant – an actor, if you will.

In doing so, researchers wanted to determine whether there was any significant link between participants with high social anxiety and the amount of time they spent looking at the confederate. Interestingly, both participants with high social anxiety and low social anxiety scores avoided looking at the confederate, on a more general scale.

It's a phenomenon called 'civil inattention', according to the researchers. It involves acknowledging a stranger's presence but disengaging in further interaction. In real-world scenarios, you'd often face this when you're in an elevator and then someone else steps in. You'd most probably mind your own business and avoid eye contact, politely of course.

Participants with higher levels of social anxiety fixated on the confederate's face for a much shorter period of time.

Have you ever pretended to look at your phone when out in public? IMAGE: Jezael Melgoza / Unsplash

“We suggest this equates to an additional level of avoidance in the more [socially anxious] participants over and above the more generic form of civil inattention found across the sample,” said the one of the study's senior authors, Irma Konovalova.

The eye-tracking glasses also found that these participants had far shorter scan path lengths, suggesting “less visual exploration” of their surrounding environments.

“One possible interpretation of this is that the higher [social anxiety] participants were especially intent on avoiding social interaction due to their anxiety,” said the authors of the study. "And the most effective way to achieve this is to avoid committing any behavior that might attract the confederate’s attention.”

These findings contradict that of previous studies, which point to hyper-vigilance (being overly-aware of people and surroundings) as a characteristic of SAD, making the latest study the first of its kind. Addressing these discrepancies, the researchers posit that hyper-vigilance may just be an “artefact of experimental paradigms” – meaning they don't ever show up in real-world scenarios.