Goal-directed utilization of threat-relevant and non-threat-relevant expressions in social anxiety: A general deficit related to social-emotional cues in an endogenous cueing task

•We tested the scope of a social anxiety-related deficit in the goal-directed usage of emotional information.•Threat- and non-threat-relevant expressions served as informative cues in an endogenous cueing task.•Reduced cueing in high versus low social anxiety extended to all emotional faces.•This difference was limited to the first of the two task blocks, possibly due to extensive practice.•Social anxiety was associated with a deficit in the flexible usage of social-emotional stimuli.