| The purpose of the present study was to examine the roles of self-focused attention, perfectionistic self-presentation style, and negative self appraisal in social anxiety, by examining how they predict social distress (i.e., anxious affect, negative cognition, and performance impairment) during a social interaction. This was the first study to determine how the perfectionistic self-presentation styles described by Hewitt et al. (2003) predict social distress for a nonclinical sample of individuals during a social interaction, and also served to address unanswered questions concerning the presence of memory distortion in social anxiety. Participants were 116 college students who took part in a conversation task with a peer where self-focused attention was heightened via the presence of mirror and video camera. They completed measures at a prior session, directly following, and 1 week after the conversation task. The results showed that self-focused attention served as a mediator between dispositional social anxiety and situational social distress. Additionally, perfectionistic self-presentation style uniquely contributed to the prediction of social distress, and self-focused attention was shown to play a mediating role in that relationship. Contrary to prediction, trait social anxiety was not associated with trait-congruent memory distortion for affect or behavior; however, self-focused attention and public self-consciousness were associated with state- and trait-congruent memory distortion, respectively. Overall, findings suggest that it is through becoming self-focused that social distress is perpetuated for socially anxious individuals. Furthermore, self-focused attention during an interaction is associated with negatively biased memory distortion. Taken together, these results point to the importance of identifying interventions that target the reduction of self-focused attention. |
