The Influence of Self-focused Attention on Social Anxious Individuals in a Social Threat Context:The Exploration on the Imagery, the Observer Perspective, and the Anxiety Emotion

• Main Authors: Chen,Pin Hao, 陳品皓
• Other Authors: 許文耀
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2011
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/35012052000269415409

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 心理學研究所 === 99 === This study aimed to explore the imagery of high social anxious individuals in the social-evaluative context by manipulating self-focused attention , and also attempted to clarify the content of the imagery, the perspective formed by the context, and the influence on the anxiety emotion. The past studies on the issues of whether the negative self-imagery of high social anxious individuals spontaneously occurred in a social threat context or only occurred in the self-focused attention have not carried out any empirical research so far, and thus it is the main research purpose of this study. In this study, 37 high and 36 low social anxious individuals were selected to conduct the experiment. After being manipulated the self-focused attention according to the groups to which they had been assigned, the participants had to engage in a social evaluation task, and a further investigation would be undertaken according to their content of inner imagery obtained in the task. The research results showed that high social anxious individuals being manipulated the self-focused attention apparently had a higher proportion of negative messages in their content of imagery and also had a relatively higher change in their anxiety emotion before and after the experiment. On the contrast, no higher proportion of negative messages in the content of imagery was observed in the group of high social anxious individuals that were not being manipulated the self-focused attention and in other two groups of low social anxious individuals. Similarly, there were no significant differences in the forms presented and the anxiety emotion in those groups as well. The inner imagery of high social anxious individuals would be influenced by the present status of the focus of attention. While in a higher self-focused attention, the content of imagery tends to be more negative, and tends to be observer perspective.