JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN PERSONALITY l&463-468 (1976)

Self-Consciousness, Self-Awareness, and Self-Attribution

DAVID M. Buss
University of Texas

MICHAEL F. SCHEIER

Carnegie-Mellon University

Self-awareness was either manipulated by a mirror (experimental) or not (con-

trol). Subjects were selected for being high or low in private self-consciousness
(disposition to attend to one’s thoughts, feelings, motives). Private self-
consciousness had a stronger effect on self-attributions than did self-awareness.
These findings have implications for attribution, self-consciousness, and the rela-
tionship between manipulations and dispositions.

Attention can be directed either inward toward the self or outward

toward the environment. Inward focus on thoughts, feelings, or motives
has been labeled self-awareness (Duval & Wicklund, 1972). It can be
induced in a variety of ways-e.g., a person can be exposed to a mirror so
that he views his own reflection (Ickes, Wicklund, & Ferris, 1973), or to a
tape recording of his own voice (Wicklund & Duval, 1971).
Previous research has manipulated self-awareness as a situational vari-
able, but there may also be a personality disposition to focus inward. Let
us call the state self-awareness and the trait, self-consciousness. Fenig-
stein, Scheier, and Buss (1975) devised a 23-item scale to measure indi-
vidual differences in self-consciousness. Factor analysis of the scale
revealed that self-consciousness has two components: public and private.
Public self-consciousness involves awareness of self as a social object. A
person high on the trait of public self-consciousness is concerned with his
social appearance and with the impressions he makes on others. An
example of an item loading high on the Public Self-Consciousness factor
is: “I’m concerned about the way I present myself.” A privately self-
conscious person is self-reflective and generally attentive to his inner
thoughts, feelings, and motives. An example of a high loading item on the
Private Self-Consciousness factor is: “I’m always trying to figure myself
out.”
Duval and Wicklund (1972) have argued that causal attributions are in
part determined by the focus of attention: Attributions to self should
Requests for reprints should be sent to Michael F. Scheier, Department of Psychology,
Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

463
Copyright @I 1976 by Academic Press. Inc.
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
464 BUSS AND SCHEIER

increase when the self is the primary focus of attention. This hypothesis
has been confirmed (Duval & Wicklund, 1973). Self-awareness was in-
duced in subjects by exposing them to their reflections in a mirror. A
control group was not exposed to a mirror. Subjects were asked to
imagine themselves in several situations and then to estimate, in percent-
age terms, their responsibility for the outcome of the hypothetical events.
Persons induced to become self-aware attributed more causality to them-
selves than did those not made self-aware.
Do individual differences in self-consciousness also affect causal at-
tributions? The privately self-conscious person, by definition, closely
attends to his inner thoughts, plans, and motives. Given this self-focus, he
should attribute more causality to himself than would the person low in
private self-consciousness. The publicly self-conscious person focuses on
how he impresses and is viewed by others. In our view, taking the
perspective of others provides no basis for making self-attributions and
therefore public self-consciousness should not be a determinant of such
attributions.
This study had two goals. The primary aim was to examine whether
self-consciousness, a personality disposition, affects self-attributions. A
subsidiary aim was to replicate the findings of Duval and Wicklund (1973)
that self-awareness affects self-attributions. Two hypotheses were ad-
vanced: (a) Persons high in private self-consciousness will make more
self-attributions than those low in private self-consciousness; (b) Persons
induced to be self-aware by exposure to a mirror will attribute more
causality to self than those not exposed to a mirror.
METHOD
Procedure
The basic procedure used was essentially that used by Duval and Wicklund (1973). The
experimenter explained that he would describe eight hypothetical situations to the subject.
The subject was asked to imagine herself in the situations and then to estimate her responsi-
bility for the outcome, from 0 to lOO?& The only requirement was that the sum of the
percentage attributed to self and the percentage attributed to other must equal 100. Eight
situations were drawn from those used by Duval and Wicklund (1973), four with positive
outcomes and four with negative outcomes. The situations were presented in random order
and each subject responded to all eight questions. A sample question was: “Imagine that
you are driving down the expressway when suddenly the woman in front of you slams on her
brakes and you run right into the back of her. To what degree did your actions cause this
outcome and to what degree did the actions of the woman cause this outcome?” These items
were read by the experimenter, who was located behind an opaque screen.
Half the subjects were assigned to the no-mirror condition; the remainder were assigned
to the mirror condition. The mirror was placed immediately in front of the subject on her
side of the screen. The angle of the mirror ensured that the subject could not avoid her
image. Subjects in the no mirror condition saw the nonreflective back of the mirror.
The foregoing manipuIations yielded a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design: Mirror and self-
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 465

consciousness were between-subjects variables and situational outcome was a within-

subjects variable. The dependent measure was mean percentage of responsibility attributed
to self.

Subjects
Several weeks prior to the experiment proper, 500 undergraduate women were adminis-
tered the Self-Consciousness Scale (Fenigstein et al., 1975) during a regular class period.
The private self-consciousness subscale was used to select subjects. The Highs were
selected from the top third of the distribution of private self-consciousness and the Lows
from the bottom third. Within self-consciousness conditions, subjects were randomly
assigned to either the mirror or the no-mirror condition. The experimenter did not know the
subjects’ scores on private self-consciousness, and therefore the cell Ns were unequal. In
the mirror condition the cell Ns were: Positive Outcomes-Low Self-Conscious, 17, and High
Self-Conscious, 10; Negative Outcomes-Low Self-Conscious, 17, and High Self-Conscious,
10. In the no-mirror conditions the four cell Ns were the same, 13.

RESULTS
The data for the eight cells are presented in Table 1. Inspection of the
rows of this table reveals the effect of private self-consciousness. In all

TABLE 1
MEAN PERCENTAGE OF ATTRIBUTIONS TO SELF

Positive Negative

Self-consciousness No mirror Mirror No mirror Mirror

LOW 46 50 53 54
(6.8) (11.3) (11.1) (12.7)
High 56 53 55 66
(8.5) (7.7) (8.8) (13.3)

Note. A high number indicates more self-attribution. The numbers in parentheses are the
. .
standard devtattons. An F,,,, test revealed no significant differences among the standard
deviations.

four comparisons of rows the Highs attributed more to the self than the
Lows. The overall difference was statistically significant, F (1,49) = 10.3,
p < .003. The effect of self-awareness was less clear. The mirror in-
creased self-attribution in three of the four conditions, but the overall
mirror-no mirror difference did not reach the conventional level of statis-
tical significance, F (1,49) = 3.1, p < .09. In brief, the disposition (private
self-consciousness) had a stronger effect on self-attribution than did the
manipulation (self-awareness).
Two other effects were significant. There was more attribution to self
when the situational outcome was negative than when it was positive, F
466 BUSS AND SCHEIER

(1, 49) = 9.56, p < .004.’ In addition, there was a significant triple
interaction, F (1,49) = 4.77, p < .05. To understand its meaning, refer to
Table 1. Given positive outcomes, individual differences in self-
consciousness had a greater impact when the mirror was absent (fist
column) than when it was present (second column); given negative out-
comes, the reverse was true (column 3 versus column 4). This interaction
seems to be one of those unusual findings that occasionally appear in
research and for which there is no obvious explanation, It will not be
discussed further.
One final question concerns the effect of public self-consciousness.
Among subjects sampled for the experiment, private and public self-
consciousness correlated .23. To determine the unique contribution of
private self-consciousness, an analysis of covariance was performed on
the attribution data with public self-consciousness as the covariate. The
results of this analysis yielded no significant effects for public self-
consciousness, F < 1.0s2 The effect for private self-consciousness was
still significant, F (1, 47) = 9.61, p < .004. Thus only private self-
consciousness affected self-attribution; public self-consciousness did
not.3
DISCUSSION
Two main facts emerge from this experiment. First, the effect of self-
awareness on causal attribution found by Duval and Wicklund (1973) was
partially replicated. Self-awareness, induced by a mirror, has a weak
effect on self-attribution, and in the present research the findings missed
the conventional level of statistical significance.
The second fact was novel: Private self-consciousness, a disposition, is
a significant determinant of self-attribution. Specifically, persons high in
private self-consciousness engage in more self-attribution than those low
in private self-consciousness. This finding has immediate implications for
research on attribution. To the authors’ knowledge, only one personality
disposition has been shown to affect attribution: locus of control (Davis &

1 The difference between positive and negative outcomes may simply reflect item content:
i.e., the wording of the negative items may have implied more personal responsibility than
the wording of the positive items. If so, the obtained effect for the outcome variable would
be due to the specific items used rather than any intrinsic difference between positive and
negative situations.
2 The data from one subject were dropped from the analysis of covariance because her
score on public self-consciousness was not available.
s For public self-consciousness, we used the entire distribution to compute covariation.
For private self-consciousness, we used the top and bottom thirds and computed the
significance of the differences between means. Thus, the effects of public self-consciousness
were determined in a different way than the effects of private self-consciousness. This issue
should be borne in mind when evaluating our conclusions.
 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS 467

Davis, 1972; Krovetz, 1974; Gilmor & Minton, 1974). We have demon-
strated that private self-consciousness also affects attribution. It is only a
small extrapolation to conclude that attribution may be affected by a
variety of personality dispositions.
The present results bear on the interaction between situations and
dispositions. Mischel, Ebbesen, and Zeiss (1973) suggest that situational
manipulations eliminate dispositional effects. They assert that disposi-
tions are important only when manipulations are weak or absent. Strong
manipulations ostensibly cancel out the impact of dispositions. The pre-
sent results are in partial opposition to their hypothesis. Given negative
situations, private self-consciousness increased self-attributions more
when self-awareness was manipulated (mirror condition) than when it was
not (control condition). This finding implies that the Mischel et al.
hypothesis may be of limited generality.
A final implication concerns the distinction between private and public
self-consciousness. We have shown that private self-consciousness leads
to more self-attributions; public self-consciousness does not. Scheier
(in press) has shown that high private self-conscious persons are more
responsive to their transient affective states. When angered, subjects high
in private self-consciousness aggressed more than those low in private
self-consciousness. The effect of public self-consciousness on angry ag-
gression was negligible. Other research by Fenigstein (1974) has shown
that high public self-conscious women are more affected by rejection:
Following exclusion from a peer group they were less willing to affiliate
with and less attracted to the group than were low public self-conscious
women. Private self-consciousness had no impact on reaction to rejection.
Taken together, these various studies lend empirical support to the distinc-
tion between private and public self-consciousness. In brief, private and
public self-consciousness have been shown to have discriminant validity.

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468 BUSS AND SCHEIER

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