Effects of mental representation of the self on attentional processing within social anxiety

Cognitive models of social anxiety suggest that fear of negative evaluation (FNE) is a central aspect of social anxiety disorder (SAD), and individuals with SAD assume that others are inherently critical of them. Specifically, individuals with social anxiety often develop biased self-images of how they believe others perceive them, which contribute to distorted mental representations of the self, or their internal understanding of themselves. The attentional control theory suggests that individuals with anxiety experience attentional control difficulties. As a result, anxiety primarily affects processing efficiency, especially executive functions such as inhibition and shifting, while performance effectiveness is often maintained but requires a greater cognitive load. Although research has explored how anxiety impacts attention, a gap remains in understanding how social anxiety influences stimulus-driven and goal-directed attentional processes, and how mental representations of the self may affect these processes. This study aimed to investigate if the relationship between social anxiety and attentional control (i.e., stimulus-driven, goal-directed) is moderated by mental representation of the self using a visual search paradigm, self-imagery manipulation, and measures of neural activity (i.e., Event Related Potentials; N1 and P3). Unexpectedly, primary results did not support the predicted relationships between social anxiety, attentional control, and perceived negative feedback based on mental representation of self. However, low socially anxious individuals in the negative self-imagery condition showed greater stimulus-driven attention, reflected in increased P3 amplitude during the visual search paradigm. Further research should consider the salience of self-imagery when examining attention processes in social anxiety.