ERP evidence for an early emotional bias towards happy faces in trait anxiety

The present study examined the influence of trait anxiety on the early stages of emotional face processing. In order to test if such early effect of anxiety could appear in response to positive as well as to negative stimuli, we recorded event-related potentials in response to both happy and fearful faces - contrasted with neutral faces - during a task where attention was explicitly directed to the emotion, in two groups differing by their anxiety level. We observed an amplification of the occipital P1 peak (90-120 ms) in response to happy compared to neutral faces in high trait anxious participants but not in the low trait anxious ones. Additionally, the N170 and EPN components were enhanced for the negative (fearful) faces, with no impact of trait anxiety. Our results provide evidence for an early bias towards positive stimuli in trait anxiety.