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Self-consciousness, self-attention, and social interaction.

1979; American Psychological Association; Volume: 37; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1037/0022-3514.37.1.75

1939-1315

Allan Fenigstein,

Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion

Two experiments were conducted to test the effects of self-focused attention on positive and negative social interactions. In the first study, the behavior of dispositionally high and low publicly self-conscious women was examined in an interpersonal situation involving rejection by a group. It was hypothesized that persons high in self-consciou sness, being more aware of how they are perceived by others, would be more sensitive and react more negatively to the rejection than those low in self-consciou sness. The predictions were confirmed. In Experiment 2, female subjects were presented with favorable or unfavorable feedback in the context of an interview, and self-attention was experimentally manipulated by exposing half the subjects to their images in a mirror. Self-awareness increased the negative response to the negative evaluation and tended to increase the positivity of the positive evaluation. The implications of selfawareness theory for the social self and social interaction are discussed. Everyday observations as well as theoretical approaches to social behavior suggest that in the presence of others, one is apt to become self-conscious, that is, aware of the self as a social object that can be observed and evaluated by others. Goffman (1959) has argued quite persuasively that when one is attending to and involved in an ongoing interaction,