Selectively Myopic? Self-Esteem and Attentional Bias in Response to Potential Relationship Threats

Two experiments examined how low and high self-esteem people regulate attention in the face of uncertainty about their partner’s caring. We primed risk regulation processes by leading experimental participants to believe their partner’s caring and responsiveness was in question. We then assessed directed attention to the partner’s positive and negative qualities using a dot-probe paradigm. High, but not low, automatically directed attention away from their partner’s negative traits in response to uncertainty.