Adolescent self-consciousness and the imaginary audience.

Abstract

An Adolescent Social Behavior Scale (ASBS) was developed to measure the imaginary audience construct and aspects of adolescent self-consciousness in social situations. There were 60 Ss (30 male, 30 female) at each of three grade levels, 8, 10, and 12, and 26 adults (9 male, 15 female) in the sample. Results show that younger Ss gave significantly more imaginary audience behavior and externally self-conscious responses than older Ss, while only moderate age differences were apparent for internally motivated self-consciousness. High anxiety was generally associated with high self-consciousness of both types, but not with imaginary audience behavior. The need for clarity in operationalizing the concepts of imaginary audience behavior and self-consciousness is emphasized.