Self-Esteem Is Associated With Attentional Selection Efficiency: An ERP Study.

Self-esteem is a subjective evaluation of one's own worth and serves as a core psychological resource for cognitive processing. This study examined the relationship between self-esteem and attentional selection. High self-esteem (HSE) and low self-esteem (LSE) participants completed a visual search task in which a target was presented with either a salient distractor (distractor-present, DP) or a non-salient distractor (distractor-absent, DA). Behaviorally, both groups showed longer reaction times in DP than DA trials, revealing a reliable attentional capture effect. In addition, this effect was significantly larger in the LSE group. The ERP results showed that, relative to the HSE group, the LSE group exhibited a reduced target-elicited N2pc in DA trials, reflecting weaker target processing, and an enhanced distractor-elicited N2pc in DP trials, suggesting greater susceptibility to attentional capture by salient distractors. These findings suggested that low self-esteem might be associated with reduced attentional selection efficiency.