Loneliness effects on the attentional shift to emotional faces

The direction of another’s eye - gaze is important for social interactions as it can indicate the focus of attention and the object of interest of the other person. It has been suggested that the attentional shift elicited by the observed gaze direction of an emotional face may be of evolutionary advantage as it facilitates the detection of potential dangers and rewards, and thus, enhance survival opportunities. Here we investigated whether perceived loneliness enhances gaze - cueing effect for emotional faces signalling affiliation or threat compared to neutral faces. According to the avoidance motivation approach, loneliness should yield greater cueing effects for angry faces (i.e., hypervigilance to negative social stimuli). In contrast, according to the approach motivation, loneliness should enhance cueing effects for happy faces as they signal affiliation. To this aim, 134 young individuals completed a non - predictive gaze - cueing task with happy, angry, and neutral faces to assess the effects of loneliness on attentional orienting. Findings showed cueing effects for individuals with low levels of perceived loneliness as well as for individuals with high levels of perceived loneliness. However, the pattern of cueing effects was different for the three emotional expressions. The present findings are discussed in the context of current theories on loneliness and social cognition.