Abstract

The directing of attention toward internal aspects of the self was studied within the framework of Duval and Wicklund's (1972) theory of objective self-awareness. According to the theory, individuals who become aware of a discrepancy between their actual behaviour and ideal standards of behaviour are motivated to change their behaviours in order to reduce the discrepancy. Whereas objective self-awareness has been induced in participants by the presence of a mirror, no specific manipulations with regard to trait-specific judgments while being self-aware have been employed in prior-research. In the current study, participants were presented with trait terms either while looking at their own image in a mirror or looking at a blank screen. Participants were expected to make self-descriptive judgments faster when primed with a matching trait term and in a state of objective self-awareness than when they were not self-focused. Contrary to expectations, priming facilitated response times for self-descriptive judgments in the absence of a mirror, when participants were not self-focused. This was only true for women. Possible explanations for this pattern of results are discussed within the framework of objective self-awareness theory