Abstract
Previous studies indicated that sensitivity to facial expressions of threat is related to anxiety in children, adolescents and adults. A small amount of anxiety often improves students' performance, but a high level of anxiety can interfere the learning process. The feeling of being threatened by particular stimuli would cause them to perceive many daily situations as threatening and this will result in more frequent experiences of fear of what may happen, especially for the high anxiety students. This research will explore the threat perception that the secondary school students might have in relation to negative facial expression and examine the sensitivity towards anger expressions as threatening stimuli. 49 students (25 low anxiety and 24 high anxiety) age between 16 to 18 years old have been recruited to answer a set of anxiety questionnaires and they were also required to identify the facial expression to explore the threat perception by looking at images posing facial expression in 2 and 3 dimensions. These images have been transformed into 5 levels of anger using FaceGen Modeller 3.5. Results demonstrated that the high anxiety students can identify threat stimuli from faces more accurately and faster than the low anxiety students. It is suggested that angry faces may be perceived as particularly threatening amongst students and play a significant role in their emotional well being. It is hoped that this research will increase our understanding of the relationship between anxiety and threat perception and this unique visual stimulus can generate a wealth of other research in Malaysia.