Concepts
Health psychology/Cognitive biases · Persecutory cognitionlow yield
Attentional bias to threat
What it means
Automatic, selective allocation of attention toward threatening stimuli — prominent in anxiety and persecutory states, where it maintains a sense of danger.
Worked example
In a crowd, attention is captured instantly by any frowning or watching face while neutral faces go unnoticed.
In the exam
In a busy room a man’s attention is repeatedly and automatically drawn to any face that looks stern or seems to be watching him, while the many neutral faces pass unnoticed.
What settles it
Attentional bias to threat is where attention is automatically DRAWN (perceptual selection). Hostile attribution bias is the INTERPRETATION of behaviour as hostile once it has been noticed.
Classically confused with
Hostile attribution bias
Source: Beck; cognitive models of anxiety/paranoia