When making decisions, attentional biases toward positive stimuli have been associated with numerous positive outcomes, such as increased social engagement, increased prosocial behaviour, decreased externalizing disorders, and decreased emotionally withdrawn behavior. In contrast, individuals with clinically relevant symptoms, such as anxiety disorder and chronic pain are shown to prioritize threat cues over reward cues. In one experiment, faces with varying valences were presented (neutral, threatening, and happy) with a forced-choice reaction time at two exposure durations, 500 and 1250msec. For individuals with high trait anxiety, there was strong evidence for an attentional bias favoring threatening facial expressions. Additionally, increased dysphoria correlated with the tendency to avoid happy faces. This tendency leads to a spiraling effect, as one will only see negative faces, which induces greater anxiety, which exacerbates the aforementioned tendency to avoid positive stimuli – a form of the vigilance-avoidance pattern.