Attentional Bias For Interpersonal Information Among College Students With Different Level Of Implicit Self-esteem

As interpersonal experience has a profound impact on self-esteem,compared with Individuals who often experience feelings of being accepted,those who are in an environment of rejection and exclusion for a long time tend to have low self-esteem.Self-esteem,one of the main components of the self-system,plays an important role in interpersonal interactions of individuals,and can influence individuals,way of perception and reaction towards environmental stimuli.Attention refers to a significant process for individuals to perceive external stimuli,and attention bias of interpersonal evaluation information is regarded as individuals' attention biases towards social acceptance and information of rejection.The attention bias hereby is selective,a process where limited attention resources make individuals prioritize information that is important to them.Attention control is individual's ability to draw attention from a dominantly advantageous and specific stimulus to another subordinate stimulus.Existing researches on the attention biases of individuals with different self-esteem levels have mainly focused on individuals' biases towards negative information or interpersonal information of rejection,and few studies have been conducted on the two concepts in a comprehensive manner.In addition,not many domestic researchers have explored whether individuals' attention control abilities have influence on their attention biases.Questions above are worth further discussion.Three experiments were designed to delve into the above questions in the study:Emotion Stroop Paradigm was used in the Experiment One to study questions from two aspects:first,whether university students with different implicit self-esteem levels have attention biases in interpersonal evaluation facial expressions;second,whether university students with different implicit self-esteem levels have attention biases in negative,non-interpersonal,and rejected facial expressions.Previous studies did not strictly distinguish the negative and non-rejected facial expressions out of the rejection ones in the interpersonal evaluation facial expressions,but the Experiment One would shed light on whether subjects demonstrate attention biases in the negative and non-rejected facial expressions and rejection ones.Experiment One illustrated that individuals with low implicit self-esteem have attention biases in both interpersonal rejection and negative,non-interpersonal and rejected facial expressions.But comparatively speaking,individuals with low implicit self-esteem pay more attention to interpersonal rejection information,while individuals with high implicit self-esteem show no differences in attention biases to facial expressions of interpersonal acceptance,interpersonal rejection and negative and non interpersonal rejection.In view of the above experimental results,Experiment Two,only choosing interpersonal evaluation facial expressions and using Spatial Cueing Paradigm,explored the intrinsic mechanism for attention bias of university students with different implicit self-esteem levels in the interpersonal evaluation facial expressions,and whether the mechanism is attention vigilance or attention disengagement.In combination of results of Experiment One and Experiment Two,it was concluded that individuals with high implicit self-esteem showed no differences in interpersonal evaluation facial expressions,while individuals with low implicit self-esteem have attention biases in interpersonal rejection facial expressions,with an attention disengagement mechanism.Therefore,Experiment Three only targeted at subjects with low implicit self-esteem.It adopted Color Word Stroop Paradigm to measure the attention control ability,for the purpose of probing into whether attention control abilities of individuals with low implicit self-esteem have impact on their attention biases.Conclusions have been made as follows:1.Individuals with low implicit self-esteem have attention biases in both interpersonal rejection information and negative and non-interpersonal rejection information.But comparatively speaking,individuals with low implicit self-esteem pay more attention to interpersonal rejection information,while individuals with high implicit self-esteem show no differences in attention biases to information of interpersonal acceptance,interpersonal rejection and negative and non interpersonal rejection.2.The intrinsic mechanism for individuals with low implicit self-esteem to respond to attention biases in interpersonal rejection information is attention disengagement.3.Individuals with low implicit self-esteem,their attention control abilities strong or weak,have no impact on attention biases in interpersonal evaluation information.