Hard to face: High rejection sensitivity is associated with preconscious attentional biases to contemptuous facial expressions

Although social rejection is an inevitable experience, the degree to which perceived social rejection affects an individual varies significantly from person to person, and can have dire consequences for interpersonal relationships.Previous research suggests that those higher in rejection sensitivity (RS) show a hypervigilance to socially rejecting cues, and may automatically respond to certain facial expressions differently than those lower in RS.The present study aimed to examine attentional biases toward socially-rejecting facial expressions through the use of especially socially relevant expressions in conjunction with behavioral and event-related potential measures of these biases.Prescreened individuals scoring in the top and bottom third of the sample on the Adult Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (A-RSQ) completed two tasks probing attentional responses to faces of different expressions (neutral, disgusted, and contemptuous).