The impact of imagined audiences on self‐appraisals

The concept of the relational self suggests that simply imagining significant others produces shifts in self‐assessments consistent with one’s roles and experiences with those others. To test relevant hypotheses, college women (from the United States) imagined a significant other as part of a visualization task. After imagining parents as compared to peers, participants described themselves as less sensual, dominant, and adventurous (Experiment 1), a pattern consistent with other women’s ratings of how they actually felt with those others. Supporting the idea that self‐esteem differences emerge in more evaluative contexts, self‐esteem moderated self‐assessments on key dimensions (Experiment 2). After imagining a romantic other but not a best friend, self‐esteem was directly related to women’s self‐ratings of sensuality, physical attractiveness, and being at ease.