The role of performance beliefs in the difference between self-report and behavioural measures of attentional control and their relationship with anxiety. (April 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Van Bockstaele, Bram; Greenwell-Barnden, Jayden; Todd, Jemma; Clarke, Patrick J.F.; MacLeod, Colin; Notebaert, Lies
• Is Part Of: Personality and individual differences. Volume 204(2023)
• Publication Date: 2023-04
• Subjects: Attentional control -- Attentional control theory -- Anxiety -- Negative self-beliefs; Personality -- Periodicals; Individuality -- Periodicals; Individuality -- Periodicals; Personality Development -- Periodicals; Personnalité -- Périodiques; Individualité -- Périodiques; 155.205
• DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2022.112047
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0191-8869

Abstract

Abstract: While empirical findings closely link poor attentional control with elevated anxiety, this relationship is more consistently evident and stronger when attentional control is measured through self-report than through behaviour. One possible explanation for these diverging findings is that people lack insight into their attentional control capabilities, and people with elevated anxiety hold more negative beliefs about their level of attentional control, resulting in lower self-reported levels of attentional control. In two studies, participants (N = 78 and N = 207) completed the attentional control scale, the attentional network test (ANT), a questionnaire measuring beliefs about attentional control in the ANT, and a measure of anxiety. In both studies, no significant associations were present between beliefs about attentional control in the ANT and participants' performance on the ANT, suggesting a lack of insight in attentional control capabilities. Both studies further demonstrated that only beliefs about attentional control but not performance in the ANT were related to self-reported attentional control and anxiety. We thus show that evidence supporting the relationship between self-reported attentional control and anxiety is driven by biased beliefs about ability to control attention in people with heightened anxiety, and not by behavioural indices of attentional control. Highlights: Anxiety links to self-reported but less so to behavioural attention control (AC). We investigated whether biased negative beliefs may explain this dissociation. We found that people lack accurate insight in behavioural AC capabilities. Only biased AC beliefs but not behavioural AC performance was related to anxiety. The anxiety-AC link thus seems to be explained by biased beliefs, not by actual AC