Private vs. public self-consciousness and self-discrepancies

Abstract

Background We studied the relationships of self-discrepancies with private and public self-consciousness. It was postulated that private self-consciousness is more strongly related to actual–ideal discrepancy than to actual–ought discrepancy, and that the latter is more strongly related to public self-consciousness. Participants and procedure The sample consisted of 71 students aged 19-25, who completed the Self-Consciousness Scale and the DRP procedure for measuring self-discrepancies. Results The results did not confirm the hypotheses, but revealed a correlation between actual–ideal discrepancy and social anxiety. It also turned out that private self-consciousness negatively correlates with the time of rating ideal-self attributes and positively with the time of rating ought-self attributes. Conclusions Self-consciousness may be related not so much to the size of self-discrepancies as to the accessibility of the content of each self-standard. The results are also consistent with the sequence of studies that challenge the central thesis of Higgins’s theory concerning the specific relationship between actual-ought discrepancy and anxiety.

Keywords

• social anxiety
• public self-consciousness
• private self-consciousness
• self-discrepancy