| Abstract: | In order to determine reactions to objective self-awareness, 96 female undergraduates received either positive or negative feedback on a “creativity” task prior to being given an opportunity to write a response to a visual cue. Half of the subjects were made objectively self-aware, via a mirror, during the visual cue task; half were not. In addition, half of the subjects were led to believe that the visual cue task was highly related to creativity, while half learned that the task was low in relevance. A “longer the response, the better” standard of correctness was established for all subjects. As predicted, the results indicated that when made objectively self-aware, subjects who received negative feedback wrote more in response to the visual cue than did those who received positive feedback, a difference which was not obtained for the subjectively self-aware subjects. The task relevance manipulation also produced a significant main effect. A similar pattern of results was obtained on a measure of the time spent on the task. The implications of the results for objective self-awareness theory are considered. |
