The Effect of Gun Violence on Threat Processing 

Objective:
The rapid detection and identification of threat is critical for survival. A large body of research suggests that attentional biases—defined as rapid or prolonged attention—for a variety of threatening stimuli are normative and early developing. However, recent work suggests that both biological and environmental factors may also play a role in shaping attention biases over the lifespan, and can lead to maladaptive pathways of emotional processing, such as risk for clinical anxiety. Importantly, like most research in psychology, the vast majority of work on attention biases and their relation to socioemotional functioning has focused on one specific population—namely, middle class, Caucasian adults. This is profoundly problematic, as there is evidence that individuals who live in more diverse and mixed socioeconomic environments experience a greater number of environmental threats—including higher rates of crime, delinquency, and most importantly, gun violence—and a greater incidence of mental health problems than middle to high income adults. 

In an ongoing longitudinal investigation of attention biases to various threats across environments that vary widely in demographics, we found that adults living in Newark, NJ reported significantly higher levels of community violence when compared to adults from communities in other states. However, it is unclear what type of community violence adults in the local Newark community most often experience, and how exposure to specific types of violence—namely gun violence—is affecting their emotional reactivity to threat and general wellbeing. This is a significant issue, as experience with specific types of environmental threats (e.g., physical violence) affects individuals’ threat responses. This study takes the first step of asking whether exposure to gun violence in a sample from the Newark community is related to behavioral responding to threatening stimuli. We will take a novel, multi-method approach that includes behavioral and neural (i.e., fMRI) measures to a) assess differential responses to stimuli that vary in valence (negative, neutral) and type of threat (general, guns); and to b) characterize the mechanisms underlying the processing of gun-related threats and how they are influenced by exposure to violence. 

Funded By:
The New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center

Project Status:
In progress

Principal Investigators (PI):
Vanessa LoBue, PhD, Mauricio Delgado, PhD

Amount Awarded:
$81,891