This study investigated the time course of selective attention to socially threatening and positive words with a modified dot-probe task. Twenty-one college students responded to targets following a pair of either socially threatening and neutral words or socially positive and neutral words, shown for the duration of 250, 500, 750 or 1000 ms. Results showed that the students attended more away from socially threatening words at 250 ms, but at 750 ms they attended more to socially threatening words. Also, at 250 ms, the lower their trait social anxiety, the more they attended away from socially threatening words.