Sex difference in awareness of threat: A meta-analysis of sex differences in attentional orienting in the dot probe task

- Females show less inclination to engage in risk and more fear than males.
- This is caused by the greater importance to maternal survival.
- The mechanism behind increased fear could be greater attentional bias to threat.
- This meta-analysis of dot-probe studies suggests that this is unlikely to be true.

It has been argued that females are more important to infant survival than males and that his may lead to their increased fear. One way of increasing female survival chances would be to increase their sensitivity to threat. The dot-probe task has been used to investigate attentional bias. In this meta-analysis we combine the results of dot-probe experiments and explicitly examine sex differences in attentional orienting bias. Overall there is little evidence to support the existence of sex differences and these results are considered in terms of evolutionary impact.