Sex difference in awareness of threat: A meta-analysis of sex differences in attentional orienting in the dot probe task

It has been argued that females are more important to infant survival than males and that this may lead to their increased fear. One way of increasing female survival chances would be to increase their sensitivity to threat. The dot-probe task has been used to investigate attentional bias. In this meta-analysis we combine the results of dot-probe experiments and explicitly examine sex differences in attentional orienting bias. Overall there is little evidence to support the existence of sex differences and these results are considered in terms of evolutionary impact.