Socioeconomic status and social anxiety: attentional control as a key missing variable?

Background and objectives: The aim was to examine the role of attentional control as a psychological factor involved in socioeconomic status-related mental health differences, and specifically in social anxiety. Based on the literature on socioeconomic status differences in cognitive abilities and attentional control theory, we hypothesized that attentional control would account for the relation between socioeconomic status and social anxiety. We tested this hypothesis in an integrative model also including trait anxiety and subjective socioeconomic status.

Design: Cross-sectional.

Method: Online, 439 French adults were recruited via social media. They completed self-reported measures of attentional control, objective socioeconomic status, subjective socioeconomic status, social anxiety, and trait anxiety.

Results: Using Structural Equation Modelling, findings showed a positive association between objective (but not subjective) socioeconomic status and attentional control, which in turn was related to social anxiety. Exploratory analyses showed that only income, as objective socioeconomic status indicator, was associated with attentional control.

Conclusions: The current study is the first to support that low socioeconomic status individuals report less attentional control and more social anxiety symptoms. This suggests that attentional control is a psychological factor involved in social anxiety inequalities.