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The purpose of this study was to examine how 2 forms of self‐focused attention, self‐reflection and self‐rumination, influence career anxiety. The authors hypothesized that the association between these 2 types of self‐focused attention and career anxiety would be mediated by career adaptability on the basis of a career construction model of adaptation. The participants were 326 undergraduate students in South Korea. The results of this study supported the hypothesized mediation model by indicating significant indirect effects of self‐reflection and self‐rumination on career anxiety via career adaptability. The direct effect of self‐rumination on career anxiety was significant (B = .44, p < .01), but the direct effect of self‐reflection on career anxiety was not significant (B = –.05, p > .05). The authors discuss implications for counselors to help college students manage career anxiety by encouraging and supporting increased career adaptability. Future research to examine the cross‐cultural validity of the current findings is needed.

Purpose In research to assess emotions from biometric signals, participants are asked to evaluate the emotions they subjectively experienced to confirm whether the assumed emotions were actually elicited. However, the evaluation of emotion may influence the biometric signals related to the emotion itself. While such evaluative processes may function as a form of emotion regulation, which is known to modulate emotional experiences, the neural mechanisms and effects of evaluation itself remain unclear. Specifically, the temporal dynamics of how these evaluations affect emotion‐related brain activity in electroencephalography (EEG) have not been investigated. Based on theories of emotional processing and self‐focused attention, we hypothesized that emotion evaluations would enhance emotional processing as reflected in frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) through both immediate attentional effects and sustained self‐focused attention. Method We measured a 29‐channel EEG in 40 healthy participants who were presented with unpleasant and highly arousing images. Participants were assigned to either an experimental group that performed the task with subjective evaluation followed by without subjective evaluation, or a control group that performed the task without subjective evaluation twice. This design allowed us to examine both immediate effects of evaluation and its lasting influence on subsequent emotional processing. Finding The results revealed that FAA was significantly lower during emotional evaluation compared to conditions without subjective evaluation, particularly during stimulus processing (300–500 ms). This early modulation suggests that evaluation automatically engages attentional processes, may reflect enhanced negative emotional processing as well as the activation of behavioral inhibition system through self‐focused attention. Conclusion This study demonstrates that the emotional evaluation procedure itself can significantly alter early emotion‐related brain activity, providing insights into how self‐focused emotional evaluation engages both emotional and motivational processes. These findings suggest the need for methodological reconsiderations in EEG emotion estimation studies. Frontal alpha asymmetry, a measure of relative frontal brain activity, was significantly lower in the condition in which participants rated their own emotions compared to the condition in which they did not, when presented with unpleasant and highly arousing images. This result indicates evaluating self‐emotion amplifies emotion‐related brain activity. This study provides a cautionary note regarding the use of such evaluations in EEG emotion estimation studies.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is characterised by a marked and persistent fear of social or performance situations. Cognitive models suggest that self-focused cognitive processes play a crucial role in generating and maintaining social anxiety, and that self-focused cognition occurs prior to, during, and following social situations (Clark & Wells, 1995; Rapee & Heimberg, 1997). There is a substantial body of empirical evidence demonstrating that socially anxious individuals engage in self-focused cognition during and following a social or performance situation. A smaller but growing body literature suggests that a similar process occurs prior to such situations, and that these three processes are interdependent. Furthermore, the vast majority of research to date indicates that self-focused cognitive processes are detrimental, and that they generate and maintain social anxiety in a variety of ways. However, there remains considerable scope for research to further explicate the role of these processes in the maintenance of SAD, and to enhance interventions designed to ameliorate their negative effects.

Purpose Excessive attentional allocation towards threats has been theorized to play a maintaining role in social anxiety disorder (SAD). However, it is unclear if both heightened attentional focus towards internal threats (i.e., interoceptive signals of anxiety) and external threats (i.e., negative social-evaluative cues) are pathogenic. Further, evidence for the causal pathways by which biased attention maintains SAD is limited. The present study tested the effects of experimentally induced internally and externally oriented attention towards threats relative to a neutral control on state anxiety and post-event processing (PEP) in a highly socially anxious sample. Methods During an impromptu speech task, participants ( N  = 123) were randomized to allocating their attention to their own thoughts, actions, or body sensations (internal condition; n  = 41), to an audience member’s reactions and evaluations (external condition; n  = 42), or to a neutral object (control condition; n  = 40). State anxiety and PEP were assessed immediately following the speech and 24 h later. Results Although no differences between the control condition and the external and internal conditions were observed, participants in the internal condition reported significantly higher state anxiety immediately after the speech and higher PEP 24 h later compared to the external condition. State anxiety immediately after the speech mediated heightened PEP 24 h later among the internal condition compared to the external condition. Conclusions Findings support the theorized maladaptive role of self-focused attention in the maintenance of SAD and suggest that attending internally may be more harmful than attending externally, despite the presence of socio-evaluative threats in the environment.

The feeling of awe is a complicated, mixed emotion that integrates confusion, astonishment, admiration and submission. Researchers have found beneficial effects of awe on individuals’ social lives. This work aims to explore the impeding effect of awe on the relationship between narcissism and irrational consumption by performing 4 studies. After study 1 verified that narcissism was positively related to impulsive consumption, study 2 activated participants’ feelings of awe through video clips and proved that awe reduced the effect of narcissism on impulsive consumption. Study 3 showed that the reduction in impulsive tendency was caused by awe rather than priming materials, and eliciting awe did not change an individual’s sense of control. Study 4 involved an online experiment among office workers and revealed that the moderating effect of awe was fully mediated by self-focused attention. Overall, the mediated moderation model is verified. This study enriches the theoretical research of awe in the Chinese cultural context and provides practical meanings.

Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is highly prevalent in childhood, yet research on cognitive processes in children with SAD is limited. This study examined anticipatory rumination (AR), self-focused attention (SFA), and post-event processing (PEP) in children with SAD and healthy controls (HC), and the impact of possible influencing factors (two conditions: parental support, self-instruction). Based on adult cognitive models, we hypothesized that children with SAD would report more negative and similar positive AR, more internal SFA, similar external focus, more negative and similar positive PEP compared to HCs. We predicted that both conditions would reduce negative AR, internal SFA, and negative PEP, with stronger effects in HCs. Participants (ages 9–14; SAD: n  = 43, HC: n  = 48) completed two speech tasks (T1, T2) in front of a peer audience. Children with SAD reported more negative AR, internal SFA, and negative PEP than HCs in both sessions. All children reported more negative AR, internal SFA, and negative PEP in T1 than T2. Surprisingly, these effects were equally strong in both groups. Condition effects were comparable across groups, with reduced negative cognitive processes in T2. These findings highlight cognitive biases in childhood SAD and the need for further research on their modifiability.

Background: : The Self-Absorption Scale (SAS) is one of the few instruments that measure dysfunctional self-focused attention or self-absorption, a transdiagnostic factor of vulnerability to various emotional disorders. The internal structure of the Spanish version of the SAS and its relationship with other variables have not been examined, nor has whether its subscales provide relevant information. These were the two goals of the present study. Method:: The factor structure of the SAS, its internal consistency, and its relationship with depression and post-traumatic stress were analyzed in a Spanish community sample of 519 adults. Results:: The SAS presented a symmetrical bifactor structure with a general factor of self-absorption that explained most of the variance in the items and two specific factors of private and public self-absorption. The total scale and the two subscales of the SAS exhibited excellent, good or adequate reliability coefficients (alphas/omegas = .70 - .88) and correlated with depression and post-traumatic stress ( = .34 - .46). Conclusions:: The SAS provides reliable, valid measures of dysfunctional self-focused attention in Spanish adults, but its Private and Public Self-absorption subscales are not much more useful than the information provided by its total scale.

Abstract Maladaptive self-focused attention (SFA) is a bias toward internal thoughts, feelings and physical states. Despite its role as a core maintaining factor of symptoms in cognitive theories of social anxiety and body dysmorphic disorders (BDDs), studies have not examined its neural basis. In this study, we hypothesized that maladaptive SFA would be associated with hyperconnectivity in the default mode network (DMN) in self-focused patients with these disorders. Thirty patients with primary social anxiety disorder or primary BDD and 28 healthy individuals were eligible and scanned. Eligibility was determined by scoring greater than 1SD or below 1SD of the Public Self-Consciousness Scale normative mean, respectively, for each group. Seed-to-voxel functional connectivity was computed using a DMN posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) seed. There was no evidence of increased DMN functional connectivity in patients compared to controls. Patients (regardless of diagnosis) showed reduced functional connectivity of the PCC with several brain regions, including the bilateral superior parietal lobule (SPL), compared to controls, which was inversely correlated with maladaptive SFA but not associated with social anxiety, body dysmorphic, depression severity or rumination. Abnormal PCC-SPL connectivity may represent a transdiagnostic neural marker of SFA that reflects difficulty shifting between internal versus external attention.

Psychological entitlement is the belief that one deserves more. As an environmental factor that is systematically related to individuals’ beliefs about themselves and subsequent social behaviors, socioeconomic status is also closely related to psychological entitlement. However, previous research on this relationship remains insufficient. In the present three studies, we aimed to explore the relationship between socioeconomic status and psychological entitlement and its potential internal mechanisms. We recruited senior high school and college school students in Northwest China as participants. In the first study, we found that subjective socioeconomic status had a stronger explanatory power of psychological entitlement than objective socioeconomic status. In the following studies, we found that explicit self-focused attention (Study 2a) and implicit self-focused attention (Study 2b) mediated the positive relationship between socioeconomic status and psychological entitlement, respectively. Moreover, the results show that self-compassion only moderated the relationship between explicit self-focused attention (not implicit self-focused attention) and psychological entitlement. For lower self-compassion individuals, explicit self-focused attention was positively related to psychological entitlement. While for higher self-compassion individuals, there was no significant correlation between explicit self-focused attention and psychological entitlement. These findings expand the social cognitive theory of social class and have implications for understanding beliefs behind different socioeconomic statuses and taking corresponding measures.

Self-focused augmented reality (AR) technologies are growing in popularity and present an opportunity to address health communication and behavior change challenges.BACKGROUNDSelf-focused augmented reality (AR) technologies are growing in popularity and present an opportunity to address health communication and behavior change challenges.We aimed to examine the impact of self-focused AR and vicarious reinforcement on psychological predictors of behavior change during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, our study included measures of fear and message minimization to assess potential adverse reactions to the design interventions.OBJECTIVEWe aimed to examine the impact of self-focused AR and vicarious reinforcement on psychological predictors of behavior change during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, our study included measures of fear and message minimization to assess potential adverse reactions to the design interventions.A between-subjects web-based experiment was conducted to compare the health perceptions of participants in self-focused AR and vicarious reinforcement design conditions to those in a control condition. Participants were randomly assigned to the control group or to an intervention condition (ie, self-focused AR, reinforcement, self-focus AR × reinforcement, and avatar).METHODSA between-subjects web-based experiment was conducted to compare the health perceptions of participants in self-focused AR and vicarious reinforcement design conditions to those in a control condition. Participants were randomly assigned to the control group or to an intervention condition (ie, self-focused AR, reinforcement, self-focus AR × reinforcement, and avatar).A total of 335 participants were included in the analysis. We found that participants who experienced self-focused AR and vicarious reinforcement scored higher in perceived threat severity (P=.03) and susceptibility (P=.01) when compared to the control. A significant indirect effect of self-focused AR and vicarious reinforcement on intention was found with perceived threat severity as a mediator (b=.06, 95% CI 0.02-0.12, SE .02). Self-focused AR and vicarious reinforcement did not result in higher levels of fear (P=.32) or message minimization (P=.42) when compared to the control.RESULTSA total of 335 participants were included in the analysis. We found that participants who experienced self-focused AR and vicarious reinforcement scored higher in perceived threat severity (P=.03) and susceptibility (P=.01) when compared to the control. A significant indirect effect of self-focused AR and vicarious reinforcement on intention was found with perceived threat severity as a mediator (b=.06, 95% CI 0.02-0.12, SE .02). Self-focused AR and vicarious reinforcement did not result in higher levels of fear (P=.32) or message minimization (P=.42) when compared to the control.Augmenting one's reflection with vicarious reinforcement may be an effective strategy for health communication designers. While our study's results did not show adverse effects in regard to fear and message minimization, utilization of self-focused AR as a health communication strategy should be done with care due to the possible adverse effects of heightened levels of fear.CONCLUSIONSAugmenting one's reflection with vicarious reinforcement may be an effective strategy for health communication designers. While our study's results did not show adverse effects in regard to fear and message minimization, utilization of self-focused AR as a health communication strategy should be done with care due to the possible adverse effects of heightened levels of fear.