Social identities reduce self-focused attention in social anxiety

Self-focused attention is a maintaining factor in social anxiety disorder and a key target in treatment. Yet, current cognitive behavioural conceptualisations of social anxiety focus on intra-psychological determinants and thus do not consider social processes that might be associated with self-focused attention. We investigated whether participants' multiple group memberships (internalised as social identities) protected against self-focused attention in two studies. These studies assessed the link between social anxiety (both trait- and state-level), social identities and self-focused attention. Study 1 was a cross-sectional online survey (N = 300) and Study 2 (N = 157) was an experiment that manipulated the salience of participants' social identities (compared to an active control condition) ahead of an anxiety-provoking speech task. In Study 1, belonging to a greater number of social groups was associated with less self-focused attention, which in turn was associated with fewer social anxiety symptoms and maladaptive cognitions. In Study 2, reflecting on one's social identities protected against acute social stress and maladaptive cognitions during the speech task—but only for participants with elevated trait-level social anxiety. Findings suggest that social identities reduce self-focused attention, with flow-on benefits for social anxiety and maladaptive cognitions. We discuss opportunities to incorporate social identities into established cognitive behavioural therapy techniques like exposure and develop understanding of the role of the self in social anxiety using insights from the social identity approach.