‘The Journal of Paychology 1288), 387—454 Private Self-Consciousness and Fear of Negative Evaluation MELISSA M. MONFRIES Department of Education The University of Newcastle, Australia NORMAN F. KAFER Department of Psychology The University of Newcastle, Austratia rn ABSTRACT. We examined the loci of social anxiety in a sample of 385 Austrian adult Subjects (186 men and 199 women, mean age 30.63 years). Responses to the Social Avo‘ tance and Distress Scale, the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale (Watson & Friend, 1969), and the Public and Private Self-Consciousness Seale (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975) ‘were intercorvelated. The results suggested that for some socially anxious people who are privately shy, the locus of their anxiety is cognitive, whereas for others who are more ‘concerned with performance, the locus is behavioral ——— —————— SOCIAL ANXIETY has been extensively studied in the context of Western cul- ture. In these studies there has been a tendency to focus on individuals who mani- fest social deficits (Gough & Thome, 1985), although some researchers (e-g., Edelman, 1985; Pilkonis, 1977: Zimbardo, 1985) have commented on the paradox that some socially anxious people may be inwardly in turmoil while behaving in a socially skilled manner; or they are perhaps “privately shy” (Pilkonis). The coo- cept of private shyness suggests that a cognitive rather than a behavioral compo- nent may be responsible for this type of social anxiety and that the cognitive com- ponent of social anxiety may be differentiated from the more severe bebavioral component of social anxiety. Researchers have consistently documented the relationship between cogni- tive deficits or aberrations and social anxiety. Such deficits, or negative cognitions, have included a selective memory for negative interactions, an underestimation of ‘Aaldvess correspondence 10 Melissa M. Monfries, Department of Education, The University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia 2308. ro448 _The Journal ef Psychology ial skills (Halford & Foddy, 1982), extermat attributions to favorable evalua- tions (Pitman, 1981, cited in Elliot, 1984), internal auiributions for failure sit tions (Beidel, Turner, & Dancu, 1985; Halford & Foddy). acgative se evaluations (Cacioppo, Glass, & Merluzzi, 1979; Jones & Briggs, 1984), and a ¢ reaction of others (Jones & Briggs). It also appears that these cngnitive deficits lead to physiological correlates of social anxiety such as high physiological reactivity (Becidel et al., 1985), blushing. stomach upsets, heart pounding, and dry mouth (Cavart, 1982, cited in Jones & Briggs, 1984). These manifestations of uncomfortable physical syinptoms could aecount for the occurrence of some of the behavioral deficits associated with anxi- ety, such as lack of assertiveness and socially inadequate responses (Dow, Big- lan, & Glaser, 1985), A major concer within the cognitive deficit approach has been the explor: tion of the negative sell-images that socially anxious people tend to have of them- selves. Schlenker and Leary (1982) and Leary and Atherton (1986) have sug- gested & model of social anxiety based on factors surrounding an individual's presentation; that is. social anxiety stems from people's concems with the impres- sions others are forming of them. Implicit in such an approach is the assumption that a persons level of self-esteem influences his or her perceptions of social events. Thus, research has shown a relationship between Jow self esteem and so- cial anxiety (Crano & Crano, 1984; Elliot, 1984; Glass. Merluzzi, Biever, & Lassen, 1982; Nichols, 1974; Smail, 1984), It also appears that perceived seif-diserepancies are important: Socially anx- ious individuals tend to have an unrealistic schemata for the ideal self while hold- ing underevaluations of their real self (Elliot, 1984; Gough, Fioravanti, & Lazzati, 1983; Higgins, 1987; Higgins, Bond, Klein, & Straurnan, 1986; Jones & Briggs, 1984), Some researchers (i.e., Burgio, Merluzzi, & Pryor, 1986; Jones & Briggs) have posited that self-focus or self-attentiveness is the underlying mechanism re- sponsible for these processes. As Carver and Scheier (1982) pointed out, attention determines the degree to which a person processes a stimulus and is influenced by it. They also sug- gested that. just as people are able to selectively attend to environmental cues, so too are they capable of differentiating the self from the environment and selec: tively attend to various aspects of themselves. The habitual disposition to be self- attentive has been labeled self-consciousness. Fenigstein, Scheier, and Buss (1975) proposed two types of self-consciousness that can be assessed by using their self-consciousness scale, Public self-consciousness refers to the habitual at- Centiveness to overt aspects of the self that others can observe as well as evaluate: Private self-consciousness denotes habitual attentiveness to covert aspects of the self that only the individual can observe (Buss. 1980; Fenigstcin et al., 1975). Both facets of self-consciousness refer to separate dimensions of cognitive styles that correlate moderately with each other (Fenigstein et al.)Monfries & Kafer _ 449 Most researchers have acknowledged that self-conseiousness is not only an important aspect of self (Burgio et al., 1986; Elliot, 1984) but is also an important component of social anxiety (Buss, 1980; Edelman, 1985; Fenigstein et al., 1975: Jones & Briggs, 1984). It is generally conceded that public self-consciousness is, positively related to social anxiety, whereas private self-consciousness is not (Buss; Cheek & Buss, 1981; Fenigstein ct al., 1975). Public self-consciousness makes people susceptible to what happens in so- cial situations, especially where there is scrutiny or confrontation (Buss, 1980), Consequently, public self-consciousness is related to the magnitude of egocentric bias in social interaction (Sandelands & Stablein, 1986) and is more likely to lead to self-presentational doubts (Leary, 1983; Schlenker & Leary, 1982; 1985). Conversely, privately self-conscious people are presumed to know themselves better, which makes them resistant to being fooled or coerced (Buss), Therefore, private self-consciousness has not been linked with social anxiety because it has been referred to as a dispositional set toward asocial and nonsocial aspects of the self (Sandelands & Stablein). Consequently, private self-consciousness has a more positive connotation than public self-consciousness, although a healthy balance of both is desirable. In keeping with this supposition, private self-consciousness tempers the debilitating aspects of social anxiety, such as creative inhibitions (Cheek & Stahl, 1986) and low self-esteem (Biliot, 1984). In addition, social anxiety and private sclf- consciousness work together to mediate the degree of congruence between self- ratings and ratings by others (ie., reducing self-diserepancies) (Jones & Briggs, 1984), ‘Thus it would appear that the privately self-conscious person would not be likely to suffer from social anxiety. However, Fenigstein et al. (1975) noted the similarity between private self-consciousness and the Jungian concept of introver- sion, Moreover, despite the moderate correlation between public and private self- consciousness, it seems anomalous that no correlations have been reported for social anxiety/shyness measures and private self-consciousness. One study, how ever, reports a peripheral association, Elliot (1984) examined the effects of self-consciousness and social anxiety oon self-esteem. He found a relationship between social anxiety and low self- esteem: private self-consciousness and low self-esteem were mediated by vulner- ability to criticism. These findings suggest that a person high in private self- consciousness and vulnerability to criticism may also be high in feelings of social anaiety that are cognitively related rather than behaviorally manifested. Such a person might experience a certain amount of cognitive distress when interacting in social situations but continue to funetion effectively in these situations. ‘Two scales developed by Watson and Friend (1969), the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale (SAD) and the Fear of Negative Evaluation (FNE) have been. used extensively as measures of social anxiety. The SAD assesses social anxiety that stems from participation in social interactions and measures social avoidance450 The Journal of Povchologs . and social distress, The FNE measures social anxiety that may arise in potentially evaluative social situstions—-apprehension about others’ evaluations and expec- tancies of negative evaluation in a social climate, Watson and Friond suggested that the scale may be synonymous wich fear of revealing one’s inferiority. In par- ticular, fear of negative evaluation is a cognitive concept similar to Elliot's (1984) measure of vulnerability to criticism. Consequently, fear of negative evaluation ‘may be an articulated vulnerability, an acknowledgment that evaluations of others can affect the individual, Consistent with the notion of cognitive shyness, we hypothesized that private self-consciousness would correlate positively with the FNE but would have ne relationship with the SAD. We also hypothesized that public self-consciousness would correlate positively with the FNE and the SAD, arguing that vulnerability to criticism directs attention to deficiencies in self-tocus, Private self consciousness tempers the effects of negative evaluations, whercas public self consciousness facilitates the effects of fear of publie scratiny. Method Participants were volunteer clerical workers (186 men and 199 women, mean age = 30.63 years) from a number of institutions in the Australian community of Newcastle. They were told that we were interested in the way people think about themselves and how they feel about their own behavior in social situations. The subjects completed three questionnaires: the FNE. and SAD scales (Watson & Friend, 1969) and the Public and Private Self-Consciousness Scaic (Fenigstein et al., 1975), All responses were anonymous, and data remained confidential to the rescarchers. No time limit was set for the completion of the scales In an earlier study of 354 first-year psychology undergraduates (Monfties & Kater, 1988), a principal-components factor analysis showed that the FNE and SAD scales contain five factors. The FNE differentiates two factors: Negative Expectations (NE), defined as anticipatory self-perceived negative evaluation (e.g., “When Tam ralking to someone, { worry what they may think of me"; and Negative Public Evaluation (NPE), defined as distress felt by perceived negative evaluations by others (¢.g., “The opinions that important people have of me cause ime little concern.” The SAD differentiates three factors: Avoidance of Groups (AVOID), for example, “I try to avoid situations which force me to be sociabl Base in Unfamiliar Groups (UNFAM), for example, “It is easy far me to relax when I am with strangers”; and Distress in Famitiar Groups (FAM), for example, 1 often feel nervous or tense in casual get-togethers.” Responses were scored for total scores on the two scales (FNET and SADT) and scores on the five subfactors (NE, PE, AVOID, UNFAM, FAM),TABLE Scores on Soctal Anxiety and Self-Consciousness, Using Pearson r Correlations Measure 12 3 4 5S 6 7 8 1 Total FNE 1 2. Negative evaluation gor 1 3. Public evaluation 85" 66% 4. Total SAD goer 4g 33" 1 5. Familiar groups Sore ($28* 3788 828 I 6 Avoidance of groups Ash 36%* DIF G6" O5t I 7. Unfamiliar groups. 4sme 44re 37" 67%" g9e* 42%" 1 age (234% 238" 08 26%" I 26* 08 08 04 92 ‘8, Public self-consciousness.414* 9, Private self-consciousness.29** Sp < 05. %*p <01 Results, ‘The scores from the FNE and SAD were examined for their relationship with public and private self-consciousness by using Pearson r correlation analyses (Table 1). The results showed that public self-conseiousness was positively corre- lated with total scores on both the ENE (r = 41) and the SAD (r = .23). Private self-consciousness, on the other hand, was positively correlated with the total scores on the FNE (r = .29), but there was no significant relationship with the total score ont the SAD. These relationships were upheld among the subfactors of the SAD and FNE with one interesting exception. Public self-consciousness did not significantly correlate with the Avoidance of Groups factor from the SAD. Discussion ‘The results were consistent with results in a number of studies that show a rela- tionship between public self-consciousness and social anxiety and also suggest that public self-consciousness is an antecedent of social anxiety (Buss, 1980; Fen- igstein et al., 1975), In contrast to other studies (Buss, 1980; Carver & Scheer, 1983), however, the hypothesis that private self-consciousness would have a sig- nificant relationship with the FNE and not with the SAD was supported. This finding supports Elliot's (1984) research, if a fear of negative evaluation and vul- nerability to criticism are considered to be synonymous constructs. Previous studies have assessed the relationship between private self. consciousness and social anxiety using the seven-item social anxiety component of the self-consciousness scale (Fenigstein ct al., 1975), which, because of its small number of items, may obscure more subtle relationships. Of interest is that all of the subfactors (with the exception of avoidance) followed the predicted rela-452 he Journal of Povchurtnes tionships. The failure to find a relationship between avoidance of groups and sell consciousness could be indicative of the nonclinical sample used. Such a supposi- tion is congruent with the suggestion (Pilkonis, 1977) that avoidance is an extreme result of shyness representative of severe pathology. As ioted earlier, Scheicr and Carver (1983) proposed that self-focusing leads 10 the selection of concrete information that results in mental comparisons at an abstract level between an actual performance and salient performance standards As a consequence, highly self-attentive individuals seck out normative informa. tion more often than less self-aitentive people. However, directing the focus to the self leads to a self- preoccupation that may impair performance as a result of the egocentric focus (Schwarzer, 1984). This process has been used to explain the relationship between public selt- consciousness and social anxiety. However, the same explanation may apply to the relationship found between private self-consciousness and the FNE. Carver and Scheier (1985) reported that self-focus facilitates performance for people low in anxiety but impairs performance for those high in anxiety. Perhaps a private self-focus alleviates the effets of a fear of negative evaluation, whereas a public self-focus enhances anxiety related 10 it One possible explanation for this effect is that the fantasy component of Private self-consciousness provides a cognitive outlet for resolutions. For ex- ample, in Elliot’s (1984) study, vulnerability to cri size had an indirect effect on a tentative association between private sel consciousness and low self-esteem. Conversely, the strong association between social anxiety and low self-esteem was explained by the di bility to criticism. Thus, fantasy and vulnerability to criticism combined with private self-consciousness may have an effect on self-esteem and subsequently bypass the condition of social anxiety. In cybernetic terns, we are essentially geared to register discrepancies and subsequently engage to reduce error feedback. If the comparator, alter the exam) nation of present actions (i.e. input function), registers a diserepancy, then a per- son attempts to bring one into line with the other (Carver & Seheier, 1985). In the case of the publicly self-conscious person, public appearance and approval (i extemal features) become the focus of attention for monitoring his or her behav ior. On the other hand, private self-consciousness, which is primarily concerned with internal states, monitors behavior fo maintain internal harmom Research has suggested that an intemal focus is discordant for a concern ‘about self-presentation. The present results suggest. however, that an internal fo- cus. as indicated by private self-consciousness, results in a specific self presentational concern (j.c,, fear of negative evaluation) that is not manifested in internal distress or avoidance. 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