Effects of dispositional self-focus,appraisal and attention instructions on responses to a threatening stimulus

Abstract

Two studies are reported which explored the relationship between self-focused attention and anxiety. The first study tested the hypotheses that self-focused attention is associated with anxiety in threatening situations and that the relationship is mediated by negative appraisal processes. Study 1 showed no significant interaction between self-focus and negative appraisal on state-anxiety. However, self-focus was associated with increments in state-anxiety, high levels of worry and somatic symptom reports in a threatening situation. The relationship between self-focus and state-anxiety was mediated by somatic symptoms. Study 2 used cognitive and somatic self-attention instructions and external focus instructions to verify the hypothesis that self-focus on somatic arousal is associated with anxiety. It is concluded that specific self-focusing tendencies are associated with the elicitation and exacerbation of anxiety.     

自我聚焦对社交焦虑的影响：抽离与正念的调节作用

本文旨在探讨抽离和正念在自我聚焦对社交焦虑影响关系中的作用。两个研究分别采用相关法和实验法,探究自我聚焦内容（冗思、正念）和反思方式（浸入、抽离）对社交焦虑的交互影响。结果：问卷数据显示,抽离在自我聚焦注意影响社交焦虑的关系中起着调节作用,无论低抽离倾向还是高抽离倾向,自我聚焦注意都能预测社交焦虑,高抽离倾向减弱个体的社交焦虑感;实验结果表明,聚焦内容与反思方式两者交互作用于社交焦虑,浸入-聚焦冗思内容引发最强的社交焦虑,抽离-聚焦正念内容引发最弱的社交焦虑。结论：抽离和聚焦正念内容都最能有效缓解自我聚焦对社交焦虑的不良影响。     

Does affect induce self-focused attention?

Despite growing evidence that depression is linked with self-focused attention, little is known about how depressed individuals become self-focused or, more generally, about what arouses self-focus in everyday life. Two experiments examined the hypothesis that affect itself induces self-focused attention. In Experiment 1, moods were manipulated with an imagination mood-induction procedure. Sad-induction Ss became higher in self-focus than did neutral-induction Ss. Experiment 2 replicated this effect for sad moods by means of a musical mood-induction procedure and different measures of self-focus. However, Experiment 2 failed to support the hypothesis that happy moods induce self-focus. The results have implications for mood-induction research, self-focused attention, and recent models of depression.     

Effects of Analytical and Experiential Self-focus on Rumination After a Stress Induction in Patients with Social Anxiety Disorder: A Pilot Study

According to cognitive models, negative post-event processing rumination is a key maintaining factor in social anxiety disorder (SAD). Analogue research has supported the differentiation of self-focus into different modes of self-focused attention with distinct effects on rumination in depression and social anxiety. The purpose of this study was to replicate these effects with a sample of clients with SAD (N = 12) using (a) an experimental, cross-over design and (b) an evaluation situation (impromptu speech) prior to manipulation. Processing an identical list of symptoms, half of a sample was asked to successively adopt an analytic (abstract, evaluative) and an experiential (concrete, process-focused) self-focus; the other half employed the modes in the reversed order. Effects were assessed with a thought-listing (TL) procedure. As predicted, the two modes of self-focused attention affected cognitions differently; participants in the experiential condition showed a tendency for a decreased proportion of negative thoughts, whereas those in the analytical condition reported a decreased proportion of neutral thoughts. No difference was shown on positive cognitions. Furthermore, the participants' self-evaluation following the speech predicted their degree of subsequent negative thinking. After self-focus inductions, however, this effect was only seen in those participants who started by receiving the analytical self-focus induction. The results support previous findings that the analytical and the experiential self-focus modes affect cognitions differently, and that experiential processing may have beneficial effects on rumination in SAD. However, results need to be replicated in a larger sample.     

Self-focused attention, gender, gender role, and vulnerability to negative affect

Research has independently shown that both gender and self-focused attention are linked to depression. In this article, we report a series of studies investigating the relation between these variables. Using a standard self-focusing manipulation, Study 1 suggested that women evidence a greater propensity to self-focus than men. We replicated these findings in Study 2. In Study 3, we conducted an experiment to determine if sex role in conjunction with experimentally increased self-focused attention would lead to more emotional distress after a negative event had occurred. Results suggested that feminine individuals who received a self-focusing manipulation responded with greater levels of self-focused attention and negative affect than did any other group. We interpreted findings in terms of a tendency to self-focus that might prime feminine people to experience depression, or alternately, as a lack of self-focusing that may insulate masculine individuals from the experience of depression.     

Excessive self-focused attention and defensiveness among psychiatric patients: a vicious cycle?

The contribution of defensive coping to the phenomenon of excessive self-focused attention was studied in 20 depressed or anxious psychiatric outpatients comprising the negative affect group, 20 patients with psychotic disorders, and a control group of 21 patients of an orthopaedic clinic. Self-focused attention was assessed using the Self-reflectiveness and Internal State Awareness subfactors of the Private Self-consciousness Scale. In accordance with other research on self-focused attention, the negative affect group obtained higher scores on the Self-reflectiveness scale than the control group (t39=2.40, p<.03). To examine the relationship between self-focus and defensiveness, Weinberger, Schwartz, and Davidson's approach was employed, using median splits of short forms of the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale and the Marlowe-Crowne scale to differentiate among four groups of subjects. The highest self-reflectiveness was found for those participants who were high in both defensiveness and anxiety. This group scored higher than the nondefensive high anxious group (t30= -2.31, p<.03). The heightened self-focused attention might result from automatically instigated states of self-focused attention and paradoxical effects of defensive efforts to avoid self-focus.     

Self-focused attention, coping responses, and distressed mood in everyday life

Several questions concerning the relation between self-focused attention and depressed mood were examined: (a) Does the association involve global negative affect, rather than sadness per se? (b) is self-focus associated with specific negative affects other than sadness? and (c) does the association occur at the between-subjects or within-subject level? Also hypothesized was that self-focus is associated with coping responses that may perpetuate negative mood. In an idiographic/nomothetic design, 40 male community residents completed daily reports for 30 days. Results suggest that self-focus is linked with global negative mood as well as specific negative affects other than sadness and that the association occurs on a between-persons, rather than a day-to-day within-person, basis. In addition, highly self-focused men reported using passive and ruminative coping styles, which in turn were associated with distressed affect.     

Diurnal variation in rumination

The present study investigated the daily fluctuation of ruminative thinking and its individual differences by using the experience sampling method. Participants recorded their thought contents and negative affect eight times a day for a week at semirandom intervals. High-trait ruminators showed high levels of self-focus, unpleasantness, and uncontrollability in their thoughts over the sampling course. These variables were interacted to predict the levels of concurrent negative affect: Self-focus was strongly associated with increased levels of negative affect when the thought was highly unpleasant and uncontrollable. A composite measure of rumination, including self-focus, unpleasantness, and uncontrollability, exhibited diurnal variation, which was assimilated by a quadratic function of time of day. However, there were differences in the estimated parameters of diurnal trajectories between high and low levels of depression, which indicated that individuals with higher levels of depression are more likely to engage in rumination in the evening, not in the morning, than those with lower levels of depression. These findings suggest that rumination in the evening would play an important role in the exacerbation and maintenance of depression.     

Adaptive and Maladaptive Self-Focus: A Pilot Extension Study With Individuals High and Low in Fear of Negative Evaluation

Previous research in depressed participants has supported the differentiation of self-focus into distinct modes of self-attention with distinct functional effects. In particular, Rimes and Watkins (2005) investigated the effects of self-focused rumination on overgeneral thinking and found that analytical, evaluative self-focus increased global negative self-judgments, whereas self-focus low in analytical thinking decreased such judgments in depressed participants. Given that self-focused attention and rumination have been implicated in the maintenance of social anxiety, the present study investigated the effects of these two distinct forms of self-focused attention on global negative self-judgments in an analogue sample for social anxiety (high and low fear of negative evaluation, FNE). Individuals high and low in FNE (n = 41 per group) were randomly allocated to analytic (abstract, evaluative) or experiential (concrete, process-focused) self-focused manipulations. As predicted, in high FNE individuals, the experiential self-focus condition decreased ratings of the self as worthless and incompetent pre- to post-manipulation, whereas the analytical self-focus condition maintained such negative self-judgments. Analytical and experiential self-focus did not differ in their effects on mood. The results suggest that an experiential mode of self-focused rumination may be adaptive in social anxiety.     

Self-focused attention and depression: Self-evaluation,affect, and life stress

Recent theory and research (Smith & Greenberg, 1981; Ingram & Smith, 1984) suggest an association between self-focused attention and depression. In an attempt to clarify the nature of this relationship, two studies were undertaken. Study I demonstrated that self-focused attention (i.e., private self-consciousness) was correlated with depression but was unrelated to test anxiety. Thus, self-focused attention was a correlate of depression but not emotional difficulty in general. Further, both depression and private self-consciousness were independently associated with a negative evaluation of the self. Self-focused attention was also found to be correlated with negative mood in individuals experiencing at least some symptoms of depression but not in nondepressed persons. Study II demonstrated that self-focused attention and stressful life events were independently associated with depression. Self-focused attention did not, however, moderate the relationship between stress and depression.     

The Role of Self-Focus,Task Difficulty,Task Self-Relevance,and Evaluation Anxiety in Reaction Time Performance

Self-focused attention has been found to facilitate task performance in some instances and inhibit it in others. Among chronically anxious individuals it appears to consistently hinder performance. Less is known about the impact of self-focus on the performance of normal individuals. The present study examines the role of task difficulty, task self-relevance, and presence of evaluation anxiety in the performance effects of self-focus among normal individuals. Participants performed a simple reaction time (RT) and a lexical decision task, in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively, with or without self-focus. Self-focus and evaluation anxiety resulted in faster responding in simple RT, but there was no significant effect of self-focus on performance in the more difficult lexical decision task. Participants' heart rate (HR) was monitored and indicated that orienting was associated with slower RT in both experiments, and less orienting was found during self-focus and evaluation conditions. Results are interpreted in light of several self-focus theories.     

Looking at me,appreciating you: Self-focused attention distinguishes between gratitude and indebtedness

We provide evidence that self-focused attention (both dispositional and situationally induced) affects the evaluation of a benefactor. Specifically, self-focused attention distinguishes between gratitude and indebtedness. In Study 1, gratitude correlated negatively with dispositional public self-focused attention and social anxiety, whereas indebtedness correlated positively with public self-focused attention and social anxiety. In Study 2, participants recalled a recent benefit under either high self-focused attention, induced via a mirror, or low self-focused attention. Highly self-focused individuals recalled increased indebtedness, but not gratitude, toward a benefactor, relative to those in the control condition. Self-focused individuals also felt less commitment and closeness to the benefactor. The implications for the link between self-focus and social emotions (and thus social life) are discussed.     

Adaptive and maladaptive ruminative self-focus during emotional processing

Ruminative self-focus on mood, problems and other aspects of self-experience can have both mal adaptive consequences, perpetuating depression, and, adaptive consequences, promoting recovery from upsetting events. Increasing evidence suggests that these contrasting effects may be explained by distinct varieties of ruminative self-focus, each with distinct functional properties. This study tested the prediction (Emotional processing, three modes of mind and the prevention of relapse in depression. Behav. Res. Therapy, 37 (1999) S53) that an experiential mode of self-focused attention would facilitate recovery from an upsetting event in comparison to a conceptual-evaluative mode of self-focused attention. To test these contrasting effects experimentally, 69 participants wrote about an induced failure experience in either a conceptual-evaluative condition (e.g. "Why did you feel this way?"), or an experiential condition ("How did you feel moment-by-moment?"). Consistent with the hypothesis, higher levels of trait disposition to ruminate were associated with relatively greater increases in negative mood 12 h after the failure in the conceptual-evaluative condition compared to the experiential condition. Furthermore, the conceptual-evaluative condition resulted in more intrusions about the failure than the experiential condition. These results support the differentiation of rumination into distinct modes of self-focused attention with distinct functional effects; a conceptual-evaluative mode that is maladaptive and an experiential mode that is adaptive.     

Within-person variations in self-focused attention and negative affect in depression and anxiety: A diary study

This study examined within-person co-occurrence of self-focus, negative affect, and stress in a community sample of adolescents with or without emotional disorders. As part of a larger study, 278 adolescents were interviewed about emotional disorders. Later, they completed diary measures over three days, six times a day, reporting their current thoughts, affect, and levels of stress. Negative affect was independently related to both concurrent stress and self-focus. Importantly, the association between negative affect and self-focus was stronger among participants with a recent unipolar mood disorder, compared to those with an anxiety disorder, comorbid anxiety and depression, or those without an emotional disorder. The implications of these findings to theories of self-focus and its role in emotional disorders are discussed.     

The effects of self-focused rumination on global negative self-judgements in depression

Previous research in dysphoric participants has found that compared with distraction, rumination inductions are associated with increased levels of cognitive distortions and overgeneral autobiographical memories. Watkins and Teasdale ((2001) Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 110, 353–357) investigated which component of rumination was responsible for this effect in overgeneral memory, and found two distinct modes of ruminative self-focus, with analytical, evaluative self-focus maintaining overgeneral memory, whereas self-focus low in analytical thinking reduced overgeneral memory. The present study compared the effects of these two distinct forms of self-focused rumination with another measure of overgeneral thinking—global negative self-judgements. Thirty depressed participants and thirty never-depressed participants were randomly allocated to ‘analytic’ (high analysis) or ‘experiential’ (low analysis) self-focused manipulations. As predicted, in depressed participants, the analytical self-focus condition increased ratings of the self as worthless and incompetent pre- to post-manipulation, whereas the experiential self-focus condition resulted in no significant change in such judgements. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that an analytical mode of self-focused rumination may be particularly maladaptive in depression.     

Performance feedback and self-focused attention in the classroom: When past and present interact

An experiment tested the impact of performance feedback on self-focused attention in high and low achievers. On the basis of previous research, which suggested that inconsistent feedback (i.e., feedback which contradicts one's performance history) receives considerable attention, it was predicted that such feedback would increase self-focus regardless of its valence (i.e., positive or negative). As predicted, high achievers were more self-focused when receiving failure feedback than when receiving success feedback or no feedback. The low achievers were more self-focused when receiving success feedback than when receiving failure feedback or no feedback. These findings are discussed in relation to Kluger and DeNisi's (1996) Feedback intervention theory and the literature on self-focused attention.     

Negative mood, self-focused attention, and the experience of physical symptoms: the joint impact hypothesis

A joint impact hypothesis on symptom experience is introduced that specifies the role of negative mood and self-focus, which have been considered independently in previous research. Accordingly, negative affect only promotes symptom experience when people simultaneously focus their attention on the self. One correlational study and 4 experiments supported this prediction: Only negative mood combined with self-focus facilitated the experience (see the self-reports in Studies 1, 2a, & 2b) and the accessibility (lexical decisions, Stroop task in Studies 3 & 4) of physical symptoms, whereas neither positive mood nor negative mood without self-focus did. Furthermore, the joint impact of negative mood and self-focused attention on momentary symptom experience remained significant after controlling for the influence of dispositional symptom reporting and neuroticism.     

Can positive affect induce self-focused attention? Methodological and measurement issues

Some studies find that positive affect can induce self-focused attention, but other studies find no effect. We suggest that the contrary findings result from how self-awareness was measured. One group of participants listened to happy or neutral music; another group imagined and described a happy or neutral event. Two measures of self-focus were then taken. The experiment replicated past findings: Positive affect increased self-focus on a pronoun selection task, but had no effect on a modified private self-consciousness scale. The results were slightly stronger when affect was induced using music. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Consequences of anticipatory processing on cognitive symptoms of social anxiety

Anticipatory processing is an anxious style of repetitive negative thought associated with social anxiety (SA) that was proposed by Clark and Wells. Considerable research has examined factors of Clark and Wells' cognitive model of SA (e.g. attention, interpretation), but few studies have examined anticipatory processing, which is hypothesized to interact with other components in the model. In the current study, individuals high in social anxiety symptoms (HSA; N = 56) and control participants [Normal Control (NC); N = 52] engaged in an anticipation or distraction task prior to a threatened social interaction. HSAs who anticipated had higher self-focused attention than NCs who anticipated and HSAs in the distraction condition, suggesting an important relationship between anticipation and self-focus that is specific to HSAs. Those who anticipated endorsed more negative interpretations than those who engaged in distraction, regardless of SA status. However, this relationship was mediated by self-focus. Implications in the context of Clark and Wells' model and future directions are discussed.