Facilitation of physical aggression through objective self-awareness

Based on a theory of self-awareness it was hypothesized that induced attention to the self would facilitate aggression if the salient standard of behavior was one in which high aggression was positively valued. Female subjects were given an opportunity to shock a male confederate of the experimenter in a presumed learning experiment. Self-awareness was induced in half the subjects by the presence of a mirror. The Mirror group delivered significantly higher shocks to the confederate than did the No-Mirror control group.