Psychological distress and attentional bias toward acne lesions in patients 
with acne

Lee, I-S; Lee, A-R; Lee, H; Park, H-J; Chung, S-Y; Wallraven, C; Bülthoff, I; Chae, Y

doi:10.1080/13548506.2014.880493

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Please note that a newer version of this item is available:
https://pure.mpg.de/pubman/item/item_2160763_3

DetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

Psychological distress and attentional bias toward acne lesions in patients with acne

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons83840

Bülthoff, I
Department Human Perception, Cognition and Action, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Max Planck Society;
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13548506.2014.880493
(Publisher version)

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Lee, I.-S., Lee, A.-R., Lee, H., Park, H.-J., Chung, S.-Y., Wallraven, C., et al. (2014). Psychological distress and attentional bias toward acne lesions in patients with acne. Psychology, Health Medicine, 19(6), 680-686. doi:10.1080/13548506.2014.880493.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-0027-7F8D-8

Abstract

Acne vulgaris is a common inflammatory disease that manifests on the face and affects appearance. In general, facial acne has a wide-ranging negative impact on the psychosocial functioning of acne sufferers and leaves physical and emotional scars. In the present study, we investigated whether patients with acne vulgaris demonstrate enhanced psychological bias when assessing the attractiveness of faces with acne symptoms and whether they devote greater selective attention to acne lesions than to acne-free (control) individuals. Participants viewed images of faces under two different skin (acne vs. acne-free) and emotional facial expression (happy and neutral) conditions. They rated the attractiveness of the faces, and the time spent fixating on the acne lesions was recorded with an eye tracker. We found that the gap in perceived attractiveness between acne and acne-free faces was greater for acne sufferers. Furthermore, patients with acne fixated longer on facial regions exhibiting acne lesions than did control participants irrespective of the facial expression depicted. In summary, patients with acne have a stronger attentional bias for acne lesions and focus more on the skin lesions than do those without acne. Clinicians treating the skin problems of patients with acne should consider these psychological and emotional scars.