Selective exposure to self

Male undergraduates received either an accepting or unaccepting communication from a coed. Then each subject had the opportunity to listen to his own voice or the voice of another male, and it was found that preference for listening to one's own voice was higher among subjects who had received positive feedback from the coed. There was also evidence that this pattern of selective exposure is weakened when feedback is less impactful. The results were interpreted through a theory of objective self awareness.     

Self-directed attention and taking the other's perspective

A series of experiments was conducted to assess the influence of self-directed attention on the ability to take another's perspective. In Experiment 1 subjects who listened to a recording of their own voice were better able to orient themselves to the perspective of another than were subjects in a control group. However, the presence of concern about a potentially negative aspect of the self eliminated the positive relationship between self-directed attention and other orientation. Experiment 2, with the same experimental conditions as in Experiment 1, investigated the relationship between self-focused attention and selfattribution for a group product. The results indicated that self-awareness lessened the tendency of subjects within a group to “overattribute” responsibility for the group product to oneself. Again, self-focused attention did not improve self-other differentiation when subjects were concerned about a potentially negative aspect of the self. A final experiment (3) was a conceptual replication of Experiment 1, using a different perspective-taking measure and a different method of inducing self-focus.     

Attributions and other inferences: Processing information about the self versus others

This study focuses on the attributional inferences involved in the comprehension of behaviors and on possible differences between the process of comprehending one's own behaviors and those of another person. Both the content of attributional judgments and the time taken to make the judgments were measured, in a design involving the comprehension of behaviors that were high or low in desirability and distinctiveness and that were understood as the subject's own versus another person's. Results show that the inferential processes in the comprehension of one's own and another's behavior are generally similar. Exceptions are where organized knowledge about the self (a self-schema) is brought into use and where differences in “perspective” between self and other influence processing. Discussion centers on the implications of the results for theories of comprehension and inference, including extensions needed to handle the self/other distinction.     

Effects of self-awareness on antinormative behavior

Based on Zimbardo's (1970) theory of deindividuation and Duval and Wicklund's (1972) theory of “objective self-awareness” it was predicted that self-awareness would lead to a decrease in transgressive behavior. Subjects were either made self-aware (seated in front of a mirror listening to their own tape-recorded voice) or nonself-aware (seated to the side of the mirror listening to another's voice) and were given an opportunity to cheat on an anagrams test. Significantly more cheated in the nonself-aware condition (71%) than in the self-aware condition (7%). The results support the basic premise of deindividuation theory that self-awareness influences impulsive, counternormative behavior and suggest that an integration of the theories of deindividuation and objective self-awareness is possible.     

Self-directed attention and the comparison of self with standards

Several theorists have assumed that self-directed attention causes a comparison between one's present behavior or state and whatever is salient and relevant as a standard of comparison. Indirect evidence bearing on this assumption was gathered in a series of four studies by monitoring subjects' tendencies to access concrete information needed to make such behavior-standard comparisons. Self-focus was varied in two of these studies by experimental manipulations: a mirrored surface, and a live observer. In the other two studies, self-focus was operationalized in terms of subjects' dispositional tendencies to direct attention to themselves (self-consciousness). Consistent with expectations, in Experiments 1 and 2, self-directed attention led to increased frequency of referring to drawings of geometric figures when attempting to reproduce them. In Experiments 3 and 4, self-focused attention increased subjects' tendencies to seek out information about ostensible performance norms reflecting the behavior of other subjects, also as predicted.     

Forms of social awareness and helping

People encounter situations from different forms of awareness; that is, they can attend to different focal topics (e.g., self, other person, or other person's situation) from different perspectives (e.g., the self's viewpoint, the other person's viewpoint). Two studies assessed whether brief interactions would produce different forms of social awareness, whether the form of awareness would persist to a subsequent interaction, and whether it would influence helping in that encounter. Pedestrians on a city sidewalk were induced to become self-focused (experimenter took their picture), become other-focused (they took experimenter's picture), or empathically adopt the perspective of another person (they advised experimenter where to take a picture). In Study 1, subjects were interviewed after leaving the experimenter. First- and third-person pronoun use and self-ratings suggested that subjects had different forms of awareness. In Study 2, pedestrians participated in one of the same three interaction conditions or a control noninteraction condition and subsequently encountered a confederate in need of help. Subjects in the self-focused and empathic condition helped more than subjects in the other-focused or control condition. Results suggest that forms of awareness created in a brief interaction do persist to subsequent interactions and influence helping. Other variables may influence helping by altering forms of social awareness.     

The salience of the self in responses to inequity

Previous research has shown that people strive to conform with the standards of significant others in distributive justice. The present research was concerned with the role of attention to the self in the same paradigm. If people are motivated to personally evaluate their own behavior as fair, then self-focus should result in heightened attempts to redress an overpayment inequity. After the subject's criterion of a fair wage was assessed, they were paid either that amount or double it. Orthogonal to this manipulation, subjects were either made objectively self-aware (OSA) or not, by the presence or absence of a mirror. Consistent with the hypothesis, overpaid OSA subjects did more work, but of a poorer quality, than overpaid not-OSA subjects. This was taken as evidence of more zealous attempts to restore a sense of equity, implicating a greater personal need to eliminate the injustice when the discrepancy between pay level and a personal standard of fairness was made more prominent to the self.     

Mapping the dialogical self: towards a rationale and method of assessment

It is widely believed that the well‐adjusted individual has an integrated, coherent and autonomous ‘core self’ or ‘ego identity’. In this paper it is argued that a ‘multi‐voiced’ or ‘dialogical self’ provides a better model. In this model the self has no central core; rather, it is the product of alternative and often opposing narrative voices. Each voice has its own life story; each competes with other voices for dominance in thought and action; and each is constituted by a different set of affectively‐charged attachments: to people, events, objects and our own bodies. It is argued that by exploring these attachments the dominant narrative voices of the self may be identified. A semi‐structured interview protocol, the Personality Web, is introduced as a method for studying the dialogical self. In phase 1, 24 attachments are elicited in four categories: people (6), events (6), places and objects (8), and orientations to body parts (4). During interviewing, the history and meaning of each attachment is explored. In phase 2, participants were asked to group their attachments by strength of association into clusters, and multidimensional scaling was used to map the individual's ‘web’ of attachments. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, the strategy of clustering attachments was shown to be successful as a means for empirically examining the dialogical self. Two case studies of midlife adults are described to illustrate the arguments and methods proposed. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The self‐esteem roller coaster: Adult attachment moderates the impact of daily feedback

People with different attachment orientations rely on different sources of self‐esteem. This 14‐day diary study examined the impact of different types of feedback on self‐esteem for adults of different attachment orientations. Consistent with theory, higher (vs. lower) anxious participants' daily self‐esteem fluctuated more with daily interpersonal feedback conveying rejection or coming from a romantic partner; they also self‐reported stronger reactions to idiosyncratic negative interpersonal feedback. Higher (vs. lower) avoidant participants showed weaker daily self‐esteem fluctuation with positive interpersonal feedback, and those with a fearful‐avoidant attachment pattern reported stronger reactions to positive agentic feedback. Self‐reported emotional reactions mediated links between attachment dimensions and self‐reported impact of feedback on self‐evaluations. Results highlight the importance of affect‐regulation strategies in influencing regulation of self‐esteem.     

Vocal signals only impact speakers’ own emotions when they are self-attributed

Emotions are often accompanied by vocalizations whose acoustic features provide information about the physiological state of the speaker. Here, we ask if perceiving these affective signals in one’s own voice has an impact on one’s own emotional state, and if it is necessary to identify these signals as self-originated for the emotional effect to occur. Participants had to deliberate out loud about how they would feel in various familiar emotional scenarios, while we covertly manipulated their voices in order to make them sound happy or sad. Perceiving the artificial affective signals in their own voice altered participants’ judgements about how they would feel in these situations. Crucially, this effect disappeared when participants detected the vocal manipulation, either explicitly or implicitly. The original valence of the scenarios also modulated the vocal feedback effect. These results highlight the role of the exteroception of self-attributed affective signals in the emergence of emotional feelings.     

All you need is love: Is the sociometer especially sensitive to one's mating capacity?

Self‐esteem has been proposed to serve as a sociometer, a gauge of one's value as a relationship partner. Based on evolutionary reasoning, we hypothesized that the sociometer is particularly sensitive to “capacity rejection” in the mating domain. Capacity rejection implies that one has low potential to be an acceptable mate now and in the future. In Study 1, participants received no feedback or negative feedback regarding their capacity for being an acceptable mate or friend. Although participants in both mate and friend conditions felt rejected, only those in the mate condition exhibited significantly lower state self‐esteem. In Study 2, we examined sex differences in attributes relevant to mate capacity. Participants were given no feedback or negative feedback regarding their capacity as a mate: Some were told that their low mate capacity is due to their physical attractiveness whereas others were told it is due to their competence and status. Among men, state self‐esteem was lower only after competence and status‐based rejection; among women, state self‐esteem was lower only after physical attractiveness‐based rejection. In both studies, additional results revealed that even while self‐esteem decreased, positive beliefs about the self were maintained, suggesting that feelings and beliefs about the self react differently to rejection. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Determinants of help seeking behaviour: The effects of helper's similarity,task centrality and recipient's self esteem

The present experiment was concerned with the way in which the characteristics of the helper the task and the recipient affect the willingness to seek help. In line with past theory and research it was reasoned that seeking help would be most threatening when one needs help on an ego - central task, and the helper is perceived as similar to oneself. Consequently, individuals were expected to seek least help under these conditions. Further it was expected that individuals who enjoy a high self esteem would be more sensitive to this self threat and seek less help under these self threatening conditions than would individuals who have a low self esteem. The experiment consisted of a 2 (similar versus dissimilar helper) times 2 (ego-central versus non central task) times 2 (high versus low self esteem subjects) between subjects design. Subjects worked on a difficult anagram task, and their actual help seeking behaviour served as a dependent measure. The findings support the experimental hypotheses. The conceptual and applied implications of these findings are discussed.     

Performance feedback and self-focused attention in the classroom: When past and present interact

An experiment tested the impact of performance feedback on self-focused attention in high and low achievers. On the basis of previous research, which suggested that inconsistent feedback (i.e., feedback which contradicts one's performance history) receives considerable attention, it was predicted that such feedback would increase self-focus regardless of its valence (i.e., positive or negative). As predicted, high achievers were more self-focused when receiving failure feedback than when receiving success feedback or no feedback. The low achievers were more self-focused when receiving success feedback than when receiving failure feedback or no feedback. These findings are discussed in relation to Kluger and DeNisi's (1996) Feedback intervention theory and the literature on self-focused attention.     

VOLITIONAL ASPECTS OF VOICE PERFORMANCE: AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH

The subjects (all females) were instructed to hold a certain note. In some of the trials an alien (female) voice with a continuously falling or rising frequency unexpectedly replaced the subject's own voice as the auditory stimulus in her headphone. Most of the subjects took the alien voice as their own and experienced a complete lack of volitional control over their own voice. A compensatory behaviour was found; when the subjects tried to hold the note the frequency of their voices went in the opposite direction to the frequency of the alien voice.     

Self-focused attention and belief perseverance

The perseverance of an erroneous belief was investigated in the debriefing paradigm as a function of self-focused attention. Subjects were given either success or failure experiences via bogus performance feedback and received this feedback under high or low mirror self-focusing. All subjects were subsequently debriefed about the false nature of the feedback, and then, before answering questions about their estimated actual performance and ability, mirror self-focus was again manipulated. The results showed that self-focus prior to debriefing increased belief perseverance while self-focus after debriefing reduced the perseverance effects. Discussion of these findings emphasized the role of self-focus in information processing before and adherence to veridical standards after debriefing.     

Disruption of writing by background speech: Does sound source location and number of voices matter?

It is not unusual that people have to write in an environment where background speech is present. Background speech can vary in both speech intelligibility and location of the sound source. Earlier research has shown disruptive effects of background speech on writing performance. To expand and reinforce this knowledge, the present study investigated the role of number of voices and sound source location in the relation between background speech and writing performance. Participants wrote texts in quiet or in background speech consisting of one or seven voices talking simultaneously located in front of or behind them. Overall, one voice was more disruptive than seven voices talking simultaneously. Self‐reports showed that sound from the front was more disruptive compared with sound from behind. Results are in line with theory of interference‐by‐process, attentional capture, and the cross‐modal theory of attention. The relevance of the results for open‐office environments is discussed.     

Self-focused attention and depression: Self-evaluation,affect, and life stress

Recent theory and research (Smith & Greenberg, 1981; Ingram & Smith, 1984) suggest an association between self-focused attention and depression. In an attempt to clarify the nature of this relationship, two studies were undertaken. Study I demonstrated that self-focused attention (i.e., private self-consciousness) was correlated with depression but was unrelated to test anxiety. Thus, self-focused attention was a correlate of depression but not emotional difficulty in general. Further, both depression and private self-consciousness were independently associated with a negative evaluation of the self. Self-focused attention was also found to be correlated with negative mood in individuals experiencing at least some symptoms of depression but not in nondepressed persons. Study II demonstrated that self-focused attention and stressful life events were independently associated with depression. Self-focused attention did not, however, moderate the relationship between stress and depression.     

人格操纵对内隐自尊的影响及其与外显自尊的关系

该研究使用内隐联想测验测量了人格反馈操纵前后被试的内隐自尊水平,同时探究了不同外显自尊水平被试内隐自尊水平的差异。结果表明,被试会出现显著的内隐自尊效应;人格反馈操纵对内隐自尊起抑制作用,正负反馈的影响存在差异;外显与内隐自尊产生分离。     

Use of first person pronouns as a function of increased objective self-awareness and performance feedback

A recent integrating formalation in social psychology, the Duval-Wicklund theory of “objective self-awareness,” has the core assumption that attention focused on the self is always aversive and, hence, avoided. While faced with either a TV camera or a mirror, and after they had received false feedback concerning their creativity, 98 undergraduates guessed at the meaning of foreign language pronouns, the unobtrusive dependent measure of the direction of the focus of attention. The standard Duval-Wicklund effect was replicated—more attention to self, that is, more first-person pronouns—in the “camera” or “mirror” than in the “no camera” or “no mirror” conditions. However, within the camera or mirror conditions, avoidance of self-focused attention occurred only after negative feedback.     

Self-awareness and drive theory: Comparing internal standards and dominant responses

Self awareness theory proposes that behavioural and cognitive changes following self- focused attention result from a comparison between a salient behavioural or cognitive aspect of the person and a relevant internal standard of correctness. Generalized drive has been offered as an alternative interpretation not requiring the assumption of a mediating cognitive process. The notion was tested that an internal standard of correctness, and not response dominance, guides behaviour following self-focused attention. The internal standard used, originality, was to be contrary to dominance. Subjects high or low on this standard were assigned to either a self-awareness, an arousal, or a control condition. First, response dominance was clearly established on a paired associates task. Then subjects' own associations to the stimulus words were obtained. In the self awareness condition, the originality of responses corresponded to internal standards. Responses in the arousal condition were not as predicted, but could be interpreted through the presumption that the particular operationalization of arousal raised not only drive level but also provided self-related stimuli. The data imply that internal standards of correctness and not response dominance influence the behaviour of those whose attention is self focused.