Abstract:

Anxiety is one of the most important kinds of negative emotions in our daily life. The potential influence of anxiety on personal life and cognitive ability is an important topic in the area of physiology. Previous studies reveal that anxiety significantly dampens social skills, for instance, high-anxious people are more likely than low-anxious people to choose avoidance strategy during social decision-making. Nevertheless, the research on this behavioral pattern has only developed for a few years and many questions remain unsolved. Particularly, previous studies selectively focus on social decisions with the economic factor, while those without the factor are largely ignored. This paper highlights the following issues which are unexplored: on individual level, whether high-anxious people are more likely to be affected by social information, and show the willingness to be conformity and obey authority; whether the motive to be involved in social comparison and social competition would be weakened among high-anxious people; on group level, whether anxious people are more likely to show interpersonal trust and collectivism. The answers to these questions would prove beneficial to the cognitive and clinical studies on anxiety.

Key words: anxiety, emotion, decision-making, social behavior, risk avoidance