Students' anxiety: An examination of the perception of facial threat and perceived paternal and maternal parenting style

Abstract

Previous studies found that, young adolescents are very sensitive to the parental behavioursand attitudes directed towards them. This suggests that those who have a negative perception towardstheir parents might also have a negative emotion and perception towards another person's appearance. The study investigatesthe relationship between anxiety andthreat perception and how it isrelated to perceived parenting style. A total of 105 school students age between 16 to 19 years old have been recruited to answer a set of questionnaire of parenting style and anxiety. They arealso required to identify the facial expression to explore the threat perceptionsby looking at images of facial expression in 2 and 3 dimensions. These images are able to betransformed into 5 levels of anger usingtheFaceGen Modeller 3.5. Results demonstrate that (a) anxiety ispositively related to perceived father and mother authoritative parenting styles, but negatively related to perceived father and mother permissive parenting styles; (b) perceived threat from anger expression is significantly and uniquely related to perceived parenting styles; and (c) perceivedthreat from facial emotion, ispositively correlated with trait anxiety and no correlation isfound with state anxiety. Thus, angry faces areperceived as threatening among students, and play a significant role in students’emotional well-beingand students-teacher interaction.