Social anxiety, evaluative threat and incidental recall of trait words

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Abstract
Subjects high in dispositional social anxiety, as compared to subjects low in it, are found to show better incidental recall of self-descriptive unlikable trait words in a Craik and Tulving paradigm (Study 1) but not likable trait words. This phenomenon is not found when anxiety is experimentally created through exposing subjects to social-evaluative threat (Study 2), and is likely to be a consequence of the negatively biased self-schema in trait-anxious subjects. Anxious self-preoccupation created through experimentally induced evaluative stress results into poor incidental recall of all words (Study 2). The debilitating effect of anxious self-preoccupation seems to be the joint result of reduced attention to task-relevant stimuli in working memory and of reduced accessibility of preexisting cognitive structures in long-term memory. Emotional arousal per se cannot account for the observed performance deficit. The relationship between anxiety, depression, and self-focused attention is discussed.