Fear of positive evaluation impairs disengagement from positive and ambiguous dynamic social cues during late-stage attentional processing.

Abstract

Fear of Positive Evaluation (FPE) is a key cognitive feature of social anxiety, yet its neurodynamic impact on social attention remains unclear. This study used a cue-target paradigm with emotional biological motion cues (happy, angry, fear, neutral) and event-related potentials (ERPs) to systematically compare attention processing between individuals with high and low levels of FPE across distinct temporal stages. Behavioral results showed that individuals with high levels of FPE showed delayed responses specifically to neutral cues under valid conditions (i.e., the target appeared at the same location as the preceding cue). Electrophysiological results revealed that all participants showed consistent performance in early spatial orienting (N1); during the conflict monitoring stage (N2), neutral cues and valid targets generally enhanced the N2 amplitude. Critically, in late motivational evaluation stage (P3), the two groups displayed dissociated patterns: individuals with low levels of FPE demonstrated adaptive threat monitoring, with the strongest P3 response to angry cues under valid conditions and enhanced P3 to fear cues under invalid conditions (i.e., the target appeared at the opposite location). In contrast, individuals with high levels of FPE displayed maladaptive attentional engagement, with enhanced P3 amplitudes and impaired disengagement from happy and neutral cues under invalid conditions. Furthermore, they exhibited a reversed threat-sensitivity, as reflected in larger P3 amplitudes to fear cues compared to angry cues under valid conditions. These results demonstrate that FPE is characterized by stage-specific dysregulation, primarily marked by late-stage hyper-engagement with positive and ambiguous social signals rather than generalized threat sensitivity. This work provides direct neural evidence for the Bivalent Fear of Evaluation model and offers novel insights for developing intervention strategies targeting cognitive biases in the evaluation stage.