approach avoidance
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In this descriptive study, we aimed to identify factors related to emergency room nurses’ disaster triage ability. A total of 166 nurses who worked for emergency departments of general hospitals completed a structured questionnaire consisting of the Disaster Triage Ability Scale (DTAS), the Strategic Thinking Scale (STS), the Problem-Solving Inventory (PSI), and the Original Grit Scale (Grit-O). The data were analyzed using SPSS/WIN 25.0 by means of descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way ANOVA, the Scheffé post hoc test, Pearson’s correlation coefficients, and stepwise multiple regression. Participants’ DTAS averaged 14.03 ± 4.28 (Range 0–20) and showed a statistically significant difference according to their experience of triage education (t = 2.26, p = 0.022) as a disaster triage-related attribute. There were significant correlations among DTAS and confidence in the PSI (r = 0.30, p < 0.001), the approach-avoidance style in the PSI (r = −0.28, p < 0.001), and futurism in the STS (r = 0.19, p = 0.019). The strongest predictor was confidence in the PSI; in addition, 14.1% of the DTAS was explained by confidence in the PSI, approach-avoidance in the PSI, and futurism in the STS. Emergency room nurses who received triage education showed a higher level of the DTAS and their DTAS could be explained by problem-solving skills and strategic thinking. Therefore, it is necessary to develop and implement triage education programs integrated with stress management to improve the approach-avoidance style to ensure better problem-solving skills and to utilize various training methods to enhance confidence to improve problem-solving skills and futurism as part of strategic thinking.

In everyday life, interactions between humans are generally modulated by the value attributed to the situation, which partly relies on the partner's behavior. A pleasant or cooperating partner may trigger an approach behavior in the observer, while an unpleasant or threatening partner may trigger an avoidance behavior. In this context, the correct interpretation of other's intentions is crucial to achieve satisfying social interactions. Social cues such as gaze direction and facial expression are both fundamental and interrelated. Typically, whenever gaze direction and facial expression of others communicate the same intention, it enhances both the interlocutor's gaze direction and the perception of facial expressions (i.e., shared signal hypothesis). For instance, an angry face with a direct gaze is perceived as more intense since it represents a threat to the observer. In this study, we propose to examine how the combination of others' gaze direction (direct or deviated) and emotional facial expressions (i.e., happiness, fear, anger, sadness, disgust, and neutrality) influence the observer's gaze perception and postural control. Gaze perception was indexed by the cone of direct gaze (CoDG) referring to the width over which an observer feels someone's gaze is directed at them. A wider CoDG indicates that the observer perceived the face as looking at them over a wider range of gaze directions. Conversely, a narrower CoDG indicates a decrease in the range of gaze directions perceived as direct. Postural control was examined through the center of pressure displacements reflecting postural stability and approach-avoidance tendencies. We also investigated how both gaze perception and postural control may vary according to participants' personality traits and emotional states (e.g., openness, anxiety, etc.). Our results confirmed that gaze perception is influenced by emotional faces: a wider CoDGs was observed with angry and disgusted faces while a narrower CoDG was observed for fearful faces. Furthermore, facial expressions combined with gaze direction influence participants' postural stability but not approach-avoidance behaviors. Results are discussed in the light of the approach-avoidance model, by considering how some personality traits modulate the relation between emotion and posture.

The use of virtual reality (VR) promises enormous potential for studying human behavior. While approach and avoidance tendencies have been explored in various areas of basic and applied psychology, such as attitude and emotion research, basic learning psychology, and behavior therapy, they have rarely been studied in VR. One major focus of this research is to understand the psychological mechanisms underlying automatic behavioral tendencies towards and away from positively or negatively evaluated stimuli. We implemented a whole-body movement stimulus-response compatibility task to explore approach-avoidance behavior in an immersive virtual environment. We chose attitudinal stimuli—spiders and butterflies—on which people widely agree in their general evaluations (in that people evaluate spiders negatively and butterflies positively), while there is still substantial inter-individual variance (i. e., the intensity in which people dislike spiders or like butterflies). We implemented two parallel approach-avoidance tasks, one in VR, one desktop-based. Both tasks revealed the expected compatibility effects that were positively intercorrelated. Interestingly, however, the compatibility effect in the VR measure was unrelated to participants’ self-reported fear of spiders and stimulus evaluations. These results raise important implications about the usage of VR to study automatic behavioral tendencies.

People display approach and avoidance tendencies toward social targets. Although much research has studied the factors that affect decisions to approach or avoid targets, less work has investigated whether cognitive factors, such as episodic memory (e.g., details remembered about others from previous encounters) contribute to such judgments. Across two experiments, participants formed positive or negative impressions of targets based on their picture, a trait-implying behavior (Experiments 1 & 2), and their political ideology (conservative or liberal; Experiment 2). Memory and approach/avoidance decisions for targets were then measured. Results showed remembering negative impressions about targets increased avoidance responses, whereas remembering positive impressions increased approach responses. Strikingly, falsely remembering negative impressions for novel social targets (not seen before) also induced avoidance. Results suggest remembering negative information about targets, whether correctly or falsely, strongly influences future social judgments. Overall, these data support an episodic memory mechanism underlying subsequent approach/avoidance judgments, which is a rich area for future research.

AbstractOxytocin (OT) plays a pivotal role in a variety of complex social behaviors by modulating approach-avoidance motivational tendencies, but recently, its social specificity has been challenged. Here, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was conducted with forty young adult men, investigating the effect of a single-dose of OT (24 IU) on behavioral and neural approach-avoidance. Frontal alpha asymmetry, indexing neurophysiological approach-avoidance, was obtained from electroencephalographic recordings while participants were presented with a series of pictures, individually rated in terms of personal relevance (i.e., high versus low positive/negative emotional evocativeness) and categorized as social or non-social. Additionally, participants could prolong (approach) or shorten (avoid) the viewing-time of each picture, providing a measure of behavioral approach-avoidance. Intranasal OT enhanced both behavioral and neural approach (increased viewing-time), particularly towards negatively valenced pictures of both social and non-social nature, thus challenging the notion that OT’s effects are specific to social stimuli. Neurally, OT specifically amplified approach-related motivational salience of stimuli that were self-rated to have high personal relevance, but irrespective of their social nature or rated affective valence (positive/negative). Together, these findings provide support to the General Approach-Avoidance Hypothesis of OT, suggesting a role of OT in amplifying the motivational salience of environmental stimuli with high (personal) relevance, but irrespective of their social/non-social nature.Clinical Trial Number: The study design was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04443647; 23/06/2020; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04443647).

AbstractFacial masks have become and may remain ubiquitous. Though important for preventing infection, they may also serve as a reminder of the risks of disease. Thus, they may either act as cues for threat, priming avoidance-related behavior, or as cues for a safe interaction, priming social approach. To distinguish between these possibilities, we assessed implicit and explicit evaluations of masked individuals as well as avoidance bias toward relatively unsafe interactions with unmasked individuals in an approach-avoidance task in an online study. We further assessed Covid19 anxiety and specific attitudes toward mask-wearing, including mask effectiveness and desirability, hindrance of communication from masks, aesthetic appeal of masks, and mask-related worrying. Across one sample of younger (18–35 years, N = 147) and one of older adults (60+ years, N = 150), we found neither an average approach nor avoidance bias toward mask-wearing compared to unmasked individuals in the indirect behavior measurement task. However, across the combined sample, self-reported mask-related worrying correlated with reduced avoidance tendencies toward unmasked individuals when Covid19 anxiety was low, but not when it was high. This relationship was specific to avoidance tendencies and was not observed in respect to explicit or implicit preference for mask-wearing individuals. We conclude that unsafe interaction styles may be reduced by targeting mask-related worrying with public interventions, in particular for populations that otherwise have low generalized Covid19 anxiety.

Environmental psychology is concerned with understanding the impact of the environment—built and natural—on the mind. Neuroscience of architecture can contribute to this aim by elucidating the workings of the brain in relation to features of our physical environment. Toward that end, Vartanian et al. (2013) examined the impact of contour on aesthetic judgments and approach-avoidance decisions while viewing images of room interiors in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. Participants found curvilinear rooms more beautiful than rectilinear rooms, and viewing curvilinear rooms in that context activated the anterior cingulate cortex—a region involved in processing emotion. That observation, coupled with the finding that pleasantness accounted for majority of variance in beauty judgments, supports the idea that our preference for curvilinear design is driven by affect. This study represents an example of how neural data can reveal mechanisms that underlie our aesthetic preferences in the domain of architecture.