It has been claimed that attentional biases cause anxiety. Attentional bias occurs when attention is automatically captured by certain stimuli. In terms of anxiety, this could be, for example, the fear of spiders. People suffering from a phobia could, for example, read a newspaper and associated stimuli, such as the word "Web", would capture their attention. Attentional bias has been found among many anxiety disorders, including social phobia, OCD, trait anxiety, social phobia, and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). I will review the evidence for the presence of attentional biases among anxiety disorders and attempt to determine whether attentional biases cause anxiety. I will review the evidence from Macleod and Mathews (2002), Koster, Crombez, Verschuere, Damme, and Wiersema (2006), and Bradley and Mogg (1999). The topic of this essay will be to review the evidence that attentional biases cause anxiety. “There is considerable evidence for an attentional bias toward threatening items in clinical anxiety” (MacLeod, Mathews, & Tata, 1986; Mogg, Mathews, & Eysenck, 1992). Some treatments have been created for anxiety disorders and have been shown to reduce cognitive biases such as attentional biases, Fox et al (2005). This indicates that an attentional bias is present in anxiety disorders. Stroop tasks have expanded research on attentional biases in the context of anxiety, as shown by Macleod (1991) and Macleod and Mathews (2002). Participants with anxiety disorders responded more slowly to threat stimuli than controls, indicating that there is an attentional bias for threat-related stimuli and that it has a greater effect on anxious individuals. Macleod and Mathews (1991) induced attentional biases in the laboratory to determine that a ca...... middle of paper ......in anxiety, so perhaps we can provide treatments for identify and relieve anxiety. Works CitedBradley, B. Mogg, K. White, J. Groom, C. Bono, J . (1999). Attentional bias for emotional faces in generalized anxiety disorder. British Journal of Clinical Psychology. 38 (1), 267 ± 278. Fox, E. Russo, R. Georgiou, G. . (2005). Anxiety modulates the degree of attention required to process emotional faces. Cognitive, affective and behavioral neuroscience. 5 (4), p396-404. Koster, E. Crombez, G. Verschuere, B. Van Damme, S. Wiersema, J.. (2006). Components of attentional bias to threat in high trait anxiety: facilitated engagement, impaired disengagement, and attentional avoidance. Behavioral research and therapy. 2 (44), p1757-1771. Mathews, A. Macleod, C. (2002). Induced processing biases have causal effects on anxiety. Cognition and emotion.. 3 (16), p.331-354.