Copyright 1987 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

0022-.*5l4/87/$00.'75

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

1987, Vol. 52, No. 6, 1087-1098

Salient Private Audiences and Awareness of the Self

John G. Holmes

Mark W. Baldwin
Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

We used self-awareness and cognitive priming methodologies to test the hypothesis that important
aspects of the experience of self derive from the way one would be perceived and responded to by a
private audience of internally represented significant others. In the first study, 40 undergraduate
women visualized the faces of either two acquaintances from campus or two older members of their
own family. Later, when they rated the enjoyableness of a sexually permissive piece of fiction, they
tended to respond in ways that would be acceptable to their salient private audience. There was some
evidence that this effect was especially pronounced for subjects made self-aware by the presence of a
small mirror, whose responsivity to self-image concerns was presumably heightened. In the second
study, 60 undergraduate men were exposed to a failure experience, and their resulting self-evaluations were assessed. Self-aware subjects' responses reflected the evaluative style of a recently visualized private audience. Strong negative self-evaluative reactions on a number of measures were evident when the salient audience tended to make acceptance contingent on successful performances,
but not when the audience manifested relatively noncontingent acceptance. These results demonstrate the influence of internally represented significant relationships on the experience of self.

A unique aspect of human cognition is the ability of people

to be aware of themselves, develop theories about who they are,

ker,

1980,

1985; object relations theory, e.g..

Eagle,

1984,

Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983, Guntrip, 1961, 1971).

and evaluate those self-images. Many models have been pro-

The common ground shared by these models is the proposi-

posed from diverse theoretical perspectives, identifying factors

tion that the self is ultimately a social construction, developed

that shape the self-evaluation process and the related cycle of

and maintained via inference from experiences with others. A

behavioral self-regulation. One idea that has formed the corner-

sense of self is experienced in relation to some audience,

stone of a number of approaches is that a person's experience

whether it be of people who are present or only imagined, spe-

of self often takes the form of imagining how the self would be

cific or generalized, actual or fantasized. Some perspectives

perceived and responded to by significant other people. This

(e.g., impression management) focus discussion on the public

idea is most prevalent in the writings of the symbolic interac-

aspects of self observable to actual other people in the immedi-

tionists (e.g., Cooley's, 1902, looking-glass self; Mead's, 1934,

ate environment. Most other writers (including some impres-

generalized other), but it is also central to diverse other theories

sion management theorists, e.g., Schlenker, 1985) also stress the

(cf. Sullivan's, 1940, reflected appraisals; Kohut's, 1984, selfob-

important influence of internally represented audiences. Our

jects; Higgins, Klein, & Strauman's, 1985, standpoints on the

research is concerned primarily with the impact of such inter-

self; reference-group theory, e.g., Kelley, 1952, Shibutani, 1955;

nal referents. For the sake of convenience, we will refer to these

impression management theory, e.g., Goffman, 1959, Schlen-

representations of others as a private audience.

One major domain of self-construal, which is the focus of this
work, concerns issues of evaluation. The particular standards
of comparison used in the self-evaluation process (e.g., ideals,

This research was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships to
Mark W. Baldwin and was the basis for his doctoral dissertation at the
University of Waterloo. Some of the data reported in this article were
presented at the June 1984 meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association, Ottawa, Ontario, and at the August 1984 meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Ontario.
We would like to thank Janet Hunt for serving as an experimenter in
Study 2. Michael Ross and Mark Zanna for valuable conversations during the earlier phases of the research, and Aaron Brower, Nancy Cantor,
John Ellard, Eric Lang, Mary Miller, Paula Niedenthal, Julie Norem,
Carolin Showers, and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on drafts of the article.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mark
W. Baldwin, Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies Unit, Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, 250 College Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5T
1R8.

values, norms), as well as the more general style of evaluation

(e.g., a vulnerability to basing global inferences and emotional
reactions on single behavioral outcomes), may reflect

the

evaluative standards and styles associated with some private

audience.
The actual process whereby the experience of self is shaped
through reference to a private audience may take a range of
forms. Self-perception and self-evaluation may often involve a
deliberate process of consciously imagining the reactions of significant others (e.g., Cooley, 1902). At other times, private-audience dynamics may be quite unconscious: Self-relevant information may simply be processed and elaborated according to
emotional and cognitive structures representing how such information would be dealt with in those significant relationships
(e.g., Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983). As a general statement of

1087

1088

MARK W. BALDWIN AND JOHN G. HOLMES

the social construction of self, we hypothesize that important

aspects of the experience of self derive from the way one would
be perceived and responded to by a private audience of significant others.
A second point of general agreement among the writers reviewed earlier is the observation that experiencing self in relation to a private audience can have motivational consequences
leading to the self-regulation of behavior. It is generally held that
people want to retain some sense that they are accepted by their
significant others and so are motivated to act in ways that would
engender acceptance in that relationship. However, the hypothesized basis for this desire for acceptance varies greatly across
different models. Some approaches, focusing on public aspects
of self, hold that it derives from the realization that many resources can be attained through acceptance and recognition by
other people (eg., Shibutani, 1955). Other writers suggest that
the need for acceptance has its roots in the interpersonal dependency of early childhood, as the child jearas that anxieties and
fears can often be relieved by calling up a mental representation
of an accepting, supportive significant other (Mahler, Pine, &
Bergman, 1975; Sullivan, 1953). To abstract a general principle
from these divergent perspectives, we posit that people are often
motivated to maintain a sense of being accepted by their private
audience of significant others.
Our intention with the private-audience notion is not to introduce a new concept into the psychological literature but
rather to articulate testable hypotheses from some particularly
valuable aspects of a number of recognized theories. Many of
these theories of self have been outside the realms of experimental social psychology, however, and they provide few guidelines
for translating the ideas into concrete research strategies. To
gain some leverage on the problem, we turned to the research
literature on objective self-awareness (Duval & Wicklund,
1972; Wicklund & Frey, 1980). More than a decade of research
has demonstrated that if individuals' momentary awareness of
self is heightened by including in the environment a stimulus
that is self-symbolic in some way, individuals typically engage
in more self-evaluation and increase efforts to regulate their behavior in ways that maintain a self-image consistent with their
attitudes, moral values, and standards of achievement
(Wicklund, 1975, 1982). Self-awareness research strategies thus
provide a methodology for activating individuals' self-relevant
goals and concerns (Carver & Scheier, 1981; Hull & Levy, 1979;
Scheier & Carver, I983a).
Using self-awareness procedures to initiate self-evaluation
would seem a promising approach for investigating how the
self-evaluation process is shaped by private audiences. The role
of significant relationships in determining standards and evaluative styles, however, has not been a major focus in studies of
self-awareness. Much progress has been made by concentrating
on the general process of self-regulation and largely avoiding
the thorny issues concerning the interpersonal sources of the
parameters of evaluation. In our first experiment, we sought to
test whether the particular ideals and self-image concerns entering into the self-evaluation process might derive from cognitive
structures representing relationships with significant others. In
the second study, we examined reactions to a failure experience
to assess whether the inferential rules linking specific outcomes

to more general conclusions about the self may be shaped by

structures representing how self-relevant information would be
dealt with in significant relationships.
Our approach for studying the effects of private audiences is
based on the common observation that most people respond at
different times to a range of different significant others, often
representing quite distinct ways of evaluating the self (Alexander & Lauderdale, 1977; James, 1925; McGuire & PadawerSinger, 1976). When evaluating the self, a person's private audience might include spouse, best friend, or family; it might include religious leaders or business colleagues. We expect that
the audience that shapes the experience of self will often be the
one that is most salient or cognitively accessible (Bruner. 1957)
at the time. However, this influence need not be a conscious
one. Research in social cognition (Bargh, 1982; Higgms &
King, 1981;Srull&Wyer, 1979,1980) has shown that it is possible to activate or prime categories for interpreting various types
of social information apparently without provoking an awareness of the process itself. We sought to apply this principle to
an interest in cognitive representations of information about
relationships. In the two studies to be reported, a guided visualization technique was used to prime certain types of private
audiences, and then self-evaluative dynamics expected to reflect
the influence of the salient audience were assessed.

Study 1
Our first objective was to test the basic premise that the standards used by self-aware individuals often derive from salient
private audiences. Research has already supported the notion
that the behavior of individuals who focus on publicly observable self-aspects tends to conform to the evaluative standards of
an audience of onlookers (see Scheier & Carver, 1983b, for a
review). There seems to be an increased impact, when individuals are acutely aware of the public self, of the evaluative tendencies of others in the environment (Fenigstein, 1979). In contrast, individuals who instead focus on private aspects of self are
observed to respond to internal sources of evaluative standards
rather than to the demands of public audiences (e.g., Froming,
Walker, & Lopyan, 1982). The goal of the first study was to extend the analysis of audience processes to the more self-definitional, private aspects of self as well and to examine whether
personal standards might be influenced by internally represented audiences (cf. Diener & Srull, 1979; Wicklund, 1982).
The hypothesis was that subjects, particularly when privately
self-aware, would be responsive to evaluative standards linked
to some private audience. Guided visualizations were used to
prime selected private audiences to see whether this might highlight the evaluative standards associated with those representations.
Undergraduate women were asked to indicate their enjoyment of a sexually permissive piece of fiction (cf. Gibbons,
1978) after a subtle manipulation in a separate context that
primed either a presumably permissive private audience (campus friends) or a comparatively conservative one (older family
members). These two audiences were used because they were
expected to be emotionally significant but would represent di-

1089

PRIVATE AUDIENCES AND SELF-AWARENESS

vergent values and standards (Fisher, Miller, Byrne, & White,

asked if, duringa break in the study, they would mind helping out some-

1980;Newcomb, 1943; Wicklund & Frey, 1980).

one else who needed people to fill out some questionnaires for her study.

As the purpose of the study was to determine whether selfevaluative standards would derive from a salient private audience, the priming manipulation was designed to facilitate a
vivid experience of the person imagined while avoiding any di-

All subjects agreed to this request.

The second (female) experimenter presented her studv js an investigation into what factors make written passages interesting and enjoyable, saying that the students would be asked to read some short excerpts
and to answer some questions about them. Subjects were then escorted

rect reference to beliefs, attitudes, or values. Theoretically, it

to the second laboratory, which contained four cubicles arranged

was not desirable explicitly to force the subjects to consider the

around a control area. Each was assigned to a cubicle. In order to ma-

attitudes of their audience (cf. Carver & Humphries, 1981;

nipulate self-awareness, two of the four cubicles contained a small mir-

Charters & Newcomb, 1952; Wicklund &Duval, 1971). Rather,

ror (16 in. X 12 in., or 40.5 cm X 30.5 cm) facing the subject, positioned

we simply wanted the target audience to be cognitively accessi-

above the slot through which materials were passed.

ble when self-aware subjects responded to the stimulus materi-

A number of steps were taken to reduce possible confounding vari-

als. The thrust of previous research is that the opinions ex-

ables. Each experimenter was blind to the subject's condition in the

pressed by self-focused individuals will closely mirror personal

attitudes and standards relevant to their self-image (Carver &
Scheier, 1981). We predicted that beyond responding to their
general system of values, subjects would tend to rate the sexual

other half of the study. To diminish possible suspicion about the mirrors, the room was described as a communal laborator> and small explanatory signs were attached to the mirrors ("Please do not disturb
equipment. Perception experiment No. 1703. Dr. Ci. Zilstein"). Also,

passage in a way that would be acceptable to the particular pri-

the second study was conducted by a second experimenter in a different

room, with materials printed in a different typeface. In debriefing, there-

vate audience that had been primed. Responsivity to the private

was no evidence that subjects were aware of the actual purpose of the

audience was expected to be especially evident for subjects who

were made self-aware by the presence of a mirror, a manipula-

procedures.
After they read and responded to a filler article about a nearby conser-

tion that has been shown reliably to increase awareness of pri-

vation area, subjects were given the second passage, which was the criti-

vate self-aspects (Framing etal., 1982; Scheier & Carver, 1980).

cal one for the study. This was a sexually permissive piece of fiction,
borrowed from a popular women's magazine, depicting a woman having
a sexual dream about a man she was attracted to. The passage was se-

Method
Subjects

lected to represent a permissive approach to sexuality without being

overly erotic or risque. After 150s, enough time to read the piece carefully, subjects were passed questions similar to those used for the first

Subjects were 40 undergraduate women enrolled in an introductory

passage. They were asked to rate on 7-point scales how exciting, clear.

psychology course at the University of Waterloo. Participation in the

enjoyable, well-written, pleasurable, and of what qualitv the passage

study entitled them to course credits. Random assignment to condition

was done before the subjects' arrival. The first part of the study was

was. Half of these questions were measures of how much they liked the

conducted by a male experimenter in sessions involving 1 to 4 persons.

passage, which was expected to be affected by the private-audience manipulation, and half asked for an evaluation of the quality of the writing
style, which was expected to be a dimension not affected by the treat-

Procedure

ment condition. These questions came roughly 10 minutes after the vi-

Subjects were firsl informed that the study involved "visualization"

sualization of the private audience.

Following some simple filler questions ostensibly assessing their recall

and that they would be asked to try to picture in their minds various

of the story, subjects responded to a set of more general attitude mea-

scenes, people, and situations and later to discuss their visualizations.

By printed instructions, half the subjects were confidentially told to

sures. They were asked to report their attitude toward premarital sex on
the following 7-point scales: bad-good, unacceptable-very acceptable,

think of two people they knew from campus, and the other half were

and not desirable-very desirable. Subjects in the mirror condition were

told to select two older members of their family. This served as the ma-

exposed to their mirror image throughout the time allotted for reading

nipulation of private audience. They were instructed to sit back, relax,

the passage and responding to the questionnaire. All subjects were then
debriefed and thanked for their participation.

and try to get a visual image in their mind of the people chosen. Subjects' visualizations were guided by the experimenter, who read the following instructions to help them develop their images (instructions were
read verbatim, once for each target person selected; ellipsis points represent a pause of approximately 5 s):
Focus your attention on this person. . . . Picture the person's
face. Really try to get an experience of the person being with you.
. . . You may want to remember a time you were actually with the
person, or you may already have a clear experience of what this
person is like.. . . Just try to get a good image of this person. You
may find that you can see the color of their eyes or hair, or maybe
hear their voice. . . . Imagine that this person is right there with
you. . . Now once you "have an image of the person, try to zoom
in and get a close-up, focused impression.. . . Hold this image for
a little while.. . . Imagine talking with the person.. . . Try to feel
them there with you.

Results
The major dependent variable was how much the subjects
reported liking the sexually permissive passage. The three measures of how enjoyable, pleasurable, and exciting the passage
was were averaged to give a single score of liking. The average
pooled within-cell correlation of these measures was satisfactory, r(38) = .79. This score was analyzed in a 2 (private audience: family members, campus associates) x 2 (sclf-awarcncss:
mirror, no mirror) analysis of variance (ANOVA). The only significant effect was a main effect for the private-audience visualization, F(\, 36) - 4.46, p < .05, indicating that subjects who
had thought of friends from campus reported liking the story

After a short discussion about the vividness of the various images and
the helpfulness of instructions (to support the cover story), subjects were

more than did those who thought of older family members

(campus associates M = 4.82, family members M - 4.02). Even

1090

MARK W. BALDWIN AND JOHN G. HOLMES

had recently imagined older members of their family rated the

Table 1
Liking of Sexually Permissive Passage by Self-Awareness

story as significantly less enjoyable than did those who had visu-

and Private-Aidience Conditions

alized friends from campus. The subtlety of the manipulation

makes this finding all the more provocative. The visualizations
Private audience

Self- awareness

Campus
associates

Family
members

Mirror
No mirror

4.97
4.67

3.90
4.13

Note Higher numbers represent more liking, n = 10 per cell.

did not include any mention of attitudes, values, or standards

but were limited to merely imagining being with the individuals
and picturing what they looked like. Even so, this minimal
priming of relationships with certain significant others was
sufficient to affect later behavior. In addition, there was some
evidence (in the planned contrasts, although not in the overall
interaction) that the influence of salient private audiences held
particularly for individuals who were self-aware. Presumably,
the presence of a mirror heightened these individuals' respon-

in a different situation with no direct connection to the earlier

sivity to the self-image implications of their behavior, and be-

experience, and after a time interval of over 10 minutes, the

cause the framing of their self-image was influenced by the eval-

private-audience visualization did have an impact on how subjects responded to the sexually permissive passage.
The second hypothesis to be investigated involved possible

uative structures of their most salient private audience, they adjusted their behavior to be consistent with that audience's

effects of the mirror manipulation. Past research (e.g.. Framing

et al., 1982: Gibbons, 1978) has found that this manipulation
of private self-awareness typically leads subjects to be more responsive to privately held attitudes and values. The influence of
personal attitudes can be tested in this study by comparing liking ratings of the sexual passage with an averaged composite of
subjects' attitudinal ratings toward premarital sex. The correlation between general attitude and ratings of the passage was
higher for self-aware subjects, pooled within-cell r(18) = .61,
p< .01, compared with r( 18) = . 17, ns, for non-self-aware subjects; however, the comparison was only marginally significant,

standards.
Because our goal was to focus on private self-aspects and private audiences, we chose to use the mirror manipulation, which
is generally assumed to increase private self-awareness (Froming et al., 1982). It is perhaps possible that for some reason our
subjects, although seated alone in cubicles with mirrors, were
also sensitized to concerns of impression management in the
public domain, and this might explain the influence of socially
derived standards (following the studies reviewed earlier, e.g..
Carver & Humphries, 1981). This seems an unlikely explanation for our study, however, given the lack of precedent in the
literature for increased concern with public self-images result-

2 = 1.51, p = .06 (one-tailed).

We hypothesized that the tendency of privately self-aware individuals to regulate their behavior according to internal evaluative guides might induce responsivity to a salient private audi-

ing from similarly private mirror-exposure situations. We suggest instead that the private as well as the public self is ulti-

ence beyond this strong tendency to use their more general system of values as an anchor. Although the Self-Awareness X

vational status of these effects. Most such findings have been

interpreted in the self-awareness literature as resulting from at-

Private Audience interaction was not significant, individual

tempts to maintain consistency with standards related to some

contrasts were used to investigate directly the impact of differ-

desired self-image. We are suggesting that to the extent that

these processes are motivated, they may serve a desire for a

ent private audiences in the two conditions of self-awareness. In

the no-mirror condition, although the means reflect somewhat
the effect of the visualization, the contrast did not reach significance, Z(36) = 1.01 (see Table 1). In the mirror condition, however, the contrast was reliable, f(36) = 2.00, p = .03 (one-tailed).

mately a social self and so is influenced by interpersonal factors.

One issue that must be left open to interpretation is the moti-

sense of acceptance by a private audience. Moreover, this perspective can address the emotional distress often experienced
around negative self-evaluations, because falling short of stan-

As predicted, those subjects who were seated in front of a mir-

dards is associated with rejection by significant others. It may

be possible, however, to offer a credible account of these types

ror while reading the passages and filling out the questionnaires
were affected by a recent visualization of either campus friends

of findings without assuming any self-evaluation process at all.

Hull and Levy (1979), for example, argued from a cognitive

or family members. The results of these contrasts should not

be considered a substitute for a significant interaction; however,

perspective that self-awareness may simply enhance the infor-

they certainly do suggest that the hypothesis involving self-

mation-processing consequences of self-relevant structures. In

A number of other measures were included to provide some

our study, this would suggest that subjects responded to an image of self associated with the primed relationship structure, as
opposed to being motivated to maintain a position that would

support for the discriminant validity of these findings. As pre-

be acceptable in the context of that relationship. No measures

dicted, analyses of the ratings of the first (filler) passage about

the conservation area and of the three measures of the writing

were included that were aimed specifically at teasing these alter-

style of the critical passage did not yield any significant effects.

to some extent.
An important question for additional research regards the
degree of awareness of private-audience dynamics. During the

awareness warrants further investigation.

Discussion
Subjects' responses to the sexually permissive passage were
affected by the manipulation of private audience. Those who

natives apart, and it seems likely that both factors arc involved

debriefing after the study, subjects overwhelmingly denied

awareness that the audiences that were primed might have had

1091

PRIVATE AUDIENCES AND SELF-AWARENESS

anything to do with their responses to the passage and fre-

examined. Subject's self-evaluative reactions to a failure experi-

quently expressed surprise that we might entertain such a no-

ence were then assessed with a variety of specific measures that,

when taken together, could serve as multiple indicators of a

tion. Indeed, there is evidence that categories can be made more

accessible and influence social perception outside the field of
conscious awareness (Bargh, 1982). The private audience's influence may occasionally be conscious, however, as evidenced
by one woman in the family-member visualization, mirror con-

more global evaluative style. Predictions were that self-awareness would lead subjects to evaluate their task performance in
a way reflecting the noncontingent or contingently accepting
style of their salient private audience.

dition. She spontaneously reported that when she went to respond to the statement "I believe that premarital sex is desir-

Method

able/undesirable," she found herself carrying on, in fantasy, an

intense argument with her mother about which number to cir-

Subjects

cle. It would seem that private-audience influences may function across a range of levels of consciousness, from information
processing directed by unconscious cognitive structures repre-

Subjects were 60 undergraduate men enrolled in an introductory psychology course at the University of Waterloo. Participation in the study
entitled them to course credits. They were run in sessions of I to 4
people by a male experimenter. Random assignment to the six experimental conditions took place before the subjects' arrival.

senting significant relationships all the way to conscious fantasy

experiences.'

Study 2
Often when people fail to achieve certain standards of performance, they evaluate themselves negatively and experience
some degree of emotional distress. The second study was designed to investigate more directly the self-evaluations people
make, particularly following a failure experience. Other research has focused on specific parameters of assigning meaning
to outcomes, such as social comparison information (Festinger,
1954) and causal attribution (Weiner, 1974). One might predict
that the general style of making such construals (e.g., what outcomes and standards are considered, where responsibility is assigned, what conclusions are drawn) may be shaped by implicational rules associated with particular private audiences.
The hypothesis of this study was that the self-evaluative style
exhibited by self-aware individuals would reflect the style of
their most salient private audience. A key factor in this formulation is the degree to which acceptance by the private audience
is experienced as ultimately contingent on meeting certain evaluative standards. Specifically, one will take achievement or morality very seriously if he or she is felt to have implications for
acceptance by a significant private audience. When acceptance
is linked to the success of one's recent endeavors, an appraisal
of failure leaves one with a feeling of rejection by the significant
other, possibly recapitulating past emotional experiences with
similar features (Bower, 1981). Conversely, noncontingent acceptance has been posited as a hallmark of healthy functioning
(cf. Rogers, 1959, "unconditional positive regard"). It is generally assumed that this evaluative style essentially buffers a person from the emotional consequences of failure by diluting its
meaning in the broader context of life's events.
In Study 2 a visualization manipulation was used to prime
different audiences, which varied in the degree to which acceptance was made contingent on successful performance. Some

Procedure
After reading and signing a consent form, subjects were led to a laboratory containing four cubicles. Half the cubicles contained a small mirror, as the manipulation of self-awareness. As in Study 1. attaching explanatory notes to the mirrors and describing the room as "cluttered
with other experimenters' equipment" seemed to allay any concerns
about the mirrors, and no subject expressed suspicion.
Subjects then donned headphones and received all their instructions
from individual tape machines. They were asked to sit back, relax, and
keep their eyes closed most of the time while doing a number of visualization exercises. The first exercise then began, in which subjects were
instructed to try to get a quick visual image of a number of objects that
were named. There were 30 objects in all. presented at intervals of 4 s
each. After the final object, as a distractor task, subjects were immediately instructed to try to visualize the letters of the alphabet as they were
named at 2-s intervals.
The next exercise was made up of the manipulation visualizations of
private audience. Subjects' instructions were to imagine being in the
situation that was described and to try to experience it as if they were
there. After this visualization, there was a 30-s period during which they
were asked to think about the final visualization, any feelings that went
along with it, and any situations of a similar nature that they had
been in.
Next came the failure experience. It was explained that one aspect of
the visualization process was that it bore close links to memory. For the
next exercise they were to try to remember as many words as they could
from the list of objects they had heard earlier. They then took the questionnaire folder from the wall in front of them and began to write what
words they could remember. (It was only at this point that the mirror
became unobstructed for subjects in the self-aware condition.) As they
tried to write down the words, they were periodically instructed to draw
a line across the page under the words they had written. This served our
purpose of making salient the fact that they were remembering very few
words. Four min were allotted for this exercise. This task is actually
very difficult, and pilot subjects had confirmed that it made them feei
incompetent.
After completing the recall task, subjects were instructed to turn off

subjects visualized an experience of noncontingent acceptance

(being with a good friend), some visualized contingent acceptance (being liked because of some positively evaluated performance), and some were presented with a control task (imagining walking down a sidewalk). As in Study 1, half the subjects
were seated facing a small mirror so that the nature of the selfevaluative process under conditions of self-awareness could be

Note that although this woman was conscious of her imagined interaction with her mother, she had not considered that this might have
been brought on by the earlier priming visualization. She was therefore
not conscious of the determinants of her self-evaluative behavior (Bowers, 1985).

1092

MARK W. BALDWIN AND JOHN G. HOLMES

the tape machine and complete the questionnaire containing the dependent measures (to be described). When they were finished the study was
explained to them, with emphasis on the fact that the recall task was
quite difficult and that it was constructed so that they would not be able
to recall many words.

Private-Audience Visualizations
The situations that subjects visualized before the recall task were chosen to vary the level of contingency of the evaluative structure of their
salient private audience. Each subject heard only one of three audience
visualizations: control, noncontingent, or contingent. The audience visualization lasted approximately 1 min.
Control. This visualization was intended to be neutral with respect
to self-evaluation processes and to have subjects absorbed in the experiences of the moment. Subjects were instructed to imagine themselves
walking down a sidewalk. Their instructions included such statements
as "picture the color of the grass" and "try to feel the concrete under
your feet."
Noncomingem. Subjects in the noncontingent acceptance condition
were asked to imagine having lunch with a good friend, someone who
would stick by them and support them through good times and bad.
They were encouraged to "feel the warmth and acceptance with this
person." The intention of this visualization was to have subjects feel
liked and accepted noncontingently.
Contingent. The contingent-audience visualization was also designed
to have people feel liked and appreciated, but this group was to feel that
the private audience's acceptance was contingent on performing well.
They imagined meeting and chatting with a new acquaintance about a
class assignment and then later overhearing this person say "he was really smart. . . . 1 like people like that." The goal of this visualization
was to have subjects feel liked and accepted by this person, with the
additional meta-level message that they were liked because of their
abilities.

senting such implicational rules may remain as one way of experiencing

self in relation to others, creating a vulnerability to the tendency to overgeneralize. An overgeneralization measure was included to assess the
degree to which subjects felt that, in some hypothetical situations, they
would draw implications from negative information about themselves.
Four situations were described, each involving cither a failure or transgression of some kind. For each situation, there were five statements
designed to represent an increasing degree of overgeneralization. One
situation, for example, was "if I told someone I would do something for
them that was very important to them, and then forgot to do it, I might
feel . . ." This was followed by implicational statements progressing
from "I forgot to do this thing" through "1 acted in an irresponsible
way" and "I am a bad person." Subjects were asked to indicate with a
check mark any statements that would correspond to how they might
typically feel in that situation.
Private-audience assessments. To assess whether the audience visualizations were satisfactorily representing different levels of contingency.
subjects were asked to indicate on a 7-point scale which idea had been
most reflected in their visualization: some people like and accept you
for what you are. without evaluating you ( 1 ) to sometimes people like
you better if you do something well, if they evaluate you favorably (7),
The midpoint of the scale (4) was labeled neither idea was reflected in
this visualization.
Subjects were also asked how the audience visualization made them
feel. On 7-point scales, they were asked to indicate how liked they felt,
liked ( 1 ) to not especially liked (7), and how evaluated they felt, not
evaluated (1) to evaluated (1),
To avoid contamination problems, the private-audience assessment
questions came after the various other dependent measures at the end
of the questionnaire.

Results
Private-Audience Assessments

Dependent Measures
Immediately after the recall task, subjects filled out a questionnaire
that included the following dependent measures.
Mood. The first page of the questionnaire was made up of 10 bipolar
mood scales. Each scale consisted of a 100-mm line with endpoints labeled according lo various positive moods and their negative counterparts (e.g., good-bad, contented-discontented, hopeless-hopeful). Subjects were asked to draw a slash across each line to indicate "how you
are feeling right now."
Self-esteem. Next came the Rosenberg (1965) Self-Esteem Scale,
which Robinson and Shaver (1973) have suggested measures the selfacceptance aspect of chronic self-esteem.
Performance attributions. Subjects were asked to indicate on a
7-point scale whether they felt that their recall performance reflected
"something to do with the situation (e.g., the task, the setting, etc.) or
something about yourself (e.g., personal characteristics)."
Social comparison. This question asked subjects to estimate how
many words on average "some people you know" would recall if they
did the memory task.
Overgeneralization. Many writers (e.g.. Beck, 1970; Buss, 1980;
Carver AGanellen, 1983; Ellis, 1977; Janoff-Bulman, 1979) have noted
that a major element in depressive states and in chronic self-esteem
problems is the tendency to draw global evaluative conclusions about
the self from specific outcomes or behaviors. Although such inferential
styles may be magnified in clinical samples, it seems likely that most
people have experienced to some degree contingent styles of evaluation
from significant others in their personal histories. A cognitive set repre-

Before examining any self-evaluative effects of the different

private audiences, it is important to know whether the visualizations adequately portrayed experiences of contingent and
noncontingent acceptance. Subjects' ratings of the private-audience visualizations were analyzed in one-way (private audience:
control, noncontingent, contingent) ANOVAS to determine
whether the manipulations made the desired impression. On
the measure of how liked subjects felt during the visualization,
there was a significant main effect for audience. F(2, 57) = 6.93,
p < .01. As shown in Table 2, both the nonconlingent and contingent groups reported feeling more liked than did the controls: noncontingent /(57) = 2.59, p < .01; contingent 1(57) =
1.72,/> = .09.
These feelings of liking were of a different quality in the
different groups. On the measure of how evaluated subjects felt
during the private-audience visualization, there was again an
effect for audience, F(2, 57) = 9.65. p < .01 (see Table 2). On
this measure the contingent group felt significantly more evaluated than the controls did, ;(57) = 2.10, p < .05. The noncontingent group felt somewhat less evaluated than controls did but
not significantly so, t < 1, ns,
Another measure of evaluativeness was the contingency scale,
which directly asked subjects the extent to which the manipulated private audience's acceptance was contingent on doing
things well. The effect for audience, F(2, 56) = 7.78. p < .01

PRIVATE AUDIENCES AND SELF-AWARENESS

Table 2
Private-Audience Assessments by Prnale-Audience Condition
Private audience
Measure

Noncontingent

Control

Contingent

Liked"
Evaluated11
Contingency'

2.30
2.80
2.85

3.50
3.35
4.2 l d

2.70
4.60
4.45

Note, n = 211 per cell.

a

Lower numbers represent feeling more liked.

Higher numbers represent feeling more evaluated.
c
Higher numbers represent perception that audience's acceptance is
contingent on behavior.
*n= 19.
b

(see Table 2) 2 indicates that the noncontingent group perceived

the audience as significantly more accepting than did controls,
1(56) = 2.14, p < .05. In contrast, the contingent group felt
somewhat less accepted than controls did, / < 1 .
The three measures of liking, evaluativeness, and contingency taken together indicate that the visualizations successfully manipulated the contingency of the private audience.
Compared to controls, both noncontingent and contingent
groups felt more liked, but whereas the liking expressed by the
former was based on noncontingent acceptance, the liking experienced by the latter group was perceived as evaluative.
Self-Esteem
Self-esteem scores showed no effects on a 3 (private audience:
control, noncontingent, contingent) X 2 (self-awareness: mirror,
no mirror) ANOVA, possibly reflecting the scale's high reliability
as a measure of chronic self-esteem (Rosenberg, 1965). In this
sample, reliability was satisfactory: average interitem r = .32,

Mood
A single mood score was computed for each subject by determining how far (in millimeters) the subject's slashes were from
the affectively negative ends of the individual scales. These values were then summed over the 10 items to obtain a score between 0 and 1 ,000, with higher numbers indicating better overall mood. This mood scale was satisfactorily reliable, with an
average interitem r of .45 and alpha of .89. A 3 X 2 (Private
Audience x Self-Awareness) ANOVA yielded only an Audience X
Mirror interaction, F(2, 54) = 3.99, p < .05 (both main effects
p> .10). To interpret the means (see Table 3), we considered
the effects of each audience in turn when the failure was experienced under no-mirror compared with mirror conditions. Subjects in the control condition reported somewhat higher mood
when a mirror was present than when it was not, 1(54) = 1.87,
p = .08. The mood ratings by the noncontingent group did not
differ between mirror and no-mirror conditions, t < 1 . Individuals in the contingent condition showed a very different pattern.
They gave quite high ratings in the absence of a mirror, but their
overall mood was significantly lowerwhen a mirror was present,

1093

/(54) = 2.1 l,p < .05. Because the mood measure was intended
as one of a number of multiple indicators of a global self-evaluative style, the interpretation of these effects will be postponed
until the Discussion section, where the profiles of results on the
various measures can be considered together.
Although performance on the task was generally quite poor.3
there was some variability across subjects. An interesting question involves the degree to which mood is determined by number of words recalled. A central assumption of the notion of
contingency is that feelings should be tied closely to performance, that is, that mood should correlate with recall. Overall,
this correlation was marginally significant: pooled within-cell
r(58) = .25, p = .06. A strong association between mood and
recall should be expected only in the contingent audience condition, however, and this is what we found: control r( 18) - .05.
ns; noncontingent r(!8) - .28. nv, contingent r ( 1 8 ) = .54.
p<.05.

Overgeneralization
An Overgeneralization score was determined for each subject
by coding the most extreme statement endorsed for each hypothetical situation described (i.e., if only the first statement was
endorsed, the item was coded /, if the second statement was
endorsed the item was coded 2, etc.), and then summing across
the four situations. This yielded a score potentially ranging
from 4 to 20, where higher numbers represent a greater tendency toward drawing personal implications from negative information about the self. This Overgeneralization scale was of
satisfactory reliability given the small number of items: average
interitem r = .23, a = .51. Its validity was supported by a negative correlation with scores on the self-esteem scale, pooled
within-cell r(56) = -.25. p = .07, indicating that, as we would
expect, the process of Overgeneralization was related to lower
self-esteem.
The 3 X 2 ANOVA revealed no main effect for self-awareness
but a marginally significant effect for audience, h(2, 54) - 2.97,
p .06. As evident from Table 3, the pattern of means is more
appropriately interpreted in terms of the significant Audience X
Self-Awareness interaction, F(1. 54) = 4.45. p< .05. This interaction is mostly attributable to the contingent set, mirror group,
which showed significantly more Overgeneralization than did
the contingent set, no-mirror group. ((54) - 2.73. p< .01. There
were no differences within the control and noncontingent
groups.

Degrees of freedom may differ slightly between analyses due to occa-

sional instances of missing data.

1

A 3 (control, nonconlingenl, contingent) * 2 (mirror, no mirror)

analysis of variance performed on the total number of words recalled

by each subject did not yield any significant effects, all /-'s < 1.5. The
average was 5.58 words recalled. The lack of recall effects is heartening
because it suggests that effects on other measures cannot simply be explained as resulting from performance differences due to distraction by
the mirror or some such thing. Also, although recall performance did
correlate with a number of the measures to follow, including it as a
covariate did not alter any of the effects.

1094

MARK W. BALDWIN AND JOHN G. HOLMES

Table 3
Self-Evaluation Scores by Self-Awareness and Private-Audience Conditions
Private audience
Contingent

Control

Noncontingent
Measure

Mirror

No mirror

Mirror

No mirror

Mirror

No mirror

Mood'
Overgeneralizationb
Performance attributions e
Social comparison

496
9.60
3.20
5.50

517
10.00
4.40
8.70

599
8.90
5.10
7.90

491
10.00
1.60
6.00

528
12.10
5.30
8.11"

652
9.70
4.70
6.30

Note, n = 10 per cell.

a
Higher numbers represent better mood.
b
Higher numbers represent a greater degree of overgeneralization.
c
Higher numbers represent attributing failure to something about self.

Performance Attributions
On a 7-point scale ranging from the situation to myself, subjects attributed responsibility for their performance on the recall task. The 3 X 2 ANOVA yielded a main effect for audience,
F(2, 54) = 3.92, p < .05. The noncontingent group attributed
the least responsibility to the self, M = 3.80, followed by the
control group, M = 4.35, with contingent subjects attributing
the most responsibility to the self, M 5.00. The individual
comparisons between experimental groups and control were
not significant, (s < 1.5.
The main effect for audience was moderated by an Audience X Self-Awareness interaction, F(2, 54) = 5.13,p < .01 (see
Table 3). Simple effects tests show that subjects in the control
condition attributed significantly more responsibility for the
performance to the self when there was a mirror present than
when there was not, ((54) = 2.47, p < .05. In the noncontingent
audience condition, the opposite pattern occurred: there was
less self-attribution when a mirror was present than when there
was not, ((54) = 1.98, p = .06. The contingent group did not
differ on this measure between self-awareness conditions, t< 1,
as their attributions of blame remained uniformly high.

subjects with different salient private audiences. The various

measures did not always show parallel patterns across groups,
possibly reflecting the complex, multidimensional nature of
self-evaluation. Our strategy was to include a number of different measures, each of which has had an important place in the
self-evaluation literature, to triangulate on certain evaluative
styles. The prediction was that making subjects self-aware
would increase the degree to which their self-evaluations reflected the evaluative style of their salient private audience. We
consider each audience condition in turn.
In the control group, for whom no specific private audience
was primed, there was a significant self-awareness effect on performance attributions. This result is consistent with the finding
in the literature that self-awareness often leads to increased selfattribution (Arkin & Duval, 1975; Buss &Scheier, 1976; Duval
& Wicklund, 1973). There was no evidence at all. however, to
indicate that accepting more responsibility for this particular
outcome had negative implications for other, more general facets of the self. There was no relation between actual performance on the task and mood and no tendency to overgeneralize
from the experience into a negatively toned style of self-evaluation. Given this apparent ability to compartmentalize the outcome, the marginally (p = .08) higher mood for self-aware con-

Social Comparison

trol subjects may reflect Wicklund's (1978) contention that selfTo assess social comparison factors, subjects were asked to
estimate how many words "some people you know" would re-

focused attention to ego-threatening information can lead to

increased defensiveness (cf. Cohen, Dowling, Bishop. & Mancy,

member in the same situation. The average estimate was 7.07

1985; Federoff & Harvey, 1976). Perhaps enhanced self-aware-

words, or about 1.5 words more than subjects' mean recall. Neither main effect in the 3 X 2 ANOVA was significant, but the

ness aids the process by increasing access to other, positive selfaspects. In the absence of measures specifically designed to as-

interaction again was reliable, F(2, 53) = 5.08, p < .05 (see Ta-

sess the salience of alternate self-esteem domains (Rosenberg,

ble 3). Comparisons within audience conditions indicate that

most of this effect was attributable to the noncontingent group,

1968), this issue remains open for future research.

where estimates of others' performance were much lower when

the mirror was present than when it was not, ((53) = 2.48, p <
.05; control ((53) = 1.47, contingent ((53) = 1.37, both ns.

Discussion

The profile of responses to the failure was quite different for

subjects who had recently visualized an experience of noncontingent acceptance. Increasing the self-awareness of these subjects appears to have enhanced their tendency to construe the
outcome according to the tolerant, nonevaluative set of the audience that had been primed. They displayed less of an inclina-

As evident from the means displayed in Table 3, the self-eval-

tion to blame themselves for the outcome (p = .06) and sug-

uative experience engendered by self-awareness was different for

gested a standard of social comparison that was much lower

PRIVATE AUDIENCES AND SELF-AWARENESS

(p < .05) and more lenient than did their counterparts who had
not been made self-aware. One could argue that self-focused
subjects' social comparison estimate that others would be able
to recall 5.5 words is also more reasonable, as it comes close to
the actual overall mean recall of 5.58 words. An unexpected
finding was the pattern of relatively negative attributions and
social comparisons made by subjects in this audience condition
who were not made self-aware. It is not obvious to us why there
should be these apparently negative consequences of visualizing
an accepting friend. When self-awareness was induced, however,
the noncontingent visualization did seem to buffer the impact
of the failure by inducing a fairly forgiving if not excusing style
of self-evaluation. It was as if an internalized friend were saying
"don't worry about it, it was a difficult situation, and no one
else would have done any better." It is interesting to note that
when these subjects were asked in debriefing how they felt their
friends would react to their failure, they often suggested that
support of this type would be offered.
In the contingent-acceptance condition, subjects who were
not self-aware reported an elevated mood, probably resulting
from the guided fantasy of being admired and liked because
of a successful performance. In hindsight, it seems not at all
surprising that the positive aspects of this visualization might
buffer individuals who are not self-aware against a subsequent
failure (see Wright & Mischel, 1982). This result, however, underlines the strategic risk we took in priming contingency with
a success experience, because we are then in the position of having to show that the evaluative style of this private audience is
capable of undercutting this effect when self-focus is increased
by the self-awareness manipulation. The manipulation checks
clearly show that experiences other than feeling successful and
liked resulted: Individuals also reported feeling more evaluated
and sensed that acceptance depended more on doing well, compared with noncontingent subjects. It was these additional aspects of their cognitive set that we hypothesized would leave
them vulnerable to negative self-evaluative experiences.
Consistent with this notion, subjects in both contingent conditions showed the strongest tendency to blame themselves for
their poor performance and to link their reported mood directly
to their performance on the task (r = .54). These undercurrents
of self-doubt became manifest when subjects' self-focus was increased. Self-aware subjects reported significantly lower moods
than did their non-self-aware counterparts (p < .05), presumably as a result of applying the contingent style of self-evaluation
to the subsequent poor task performance (i.e., "because I am a
failure, people will not accept me"). The most striking evidence
of a contingent mode of evaluation comes from the overgeneralization measure: Self-aware subjects were much more likely
(p < .01) to overgeneralize from specific negative information
about the self. The fact that the overgeneralization measure was
made up of a number of different hypothetical situations (e.g.,
denying a transgression, being unable to learn a new sport) suggests that the insidious effects of a contingently accepting audience might generalize far beyond the particular domain in
which it is introduced.4
Although the pattern of the means on the various measures
was not always entirely consistent, it did appear to reflect
different styles of self-evaluation for subjects with different sa-

1095

lient private audiences under conditions fostering self-awareness. Individuals in the noncontingent group, whose private audiences did not base acceptance on successful performances,
did not display overly self-critical responses after the failure on
the memory task. Subjects with contingently accepting audiences, in contrast, seemed inclined to accept blame, draw negative evaluative implications about the self, and report moods
that closely reflected the adequacy of their performance. A multivariate analysis supported this view of the measures as multiple indicators of the effects of the conditions. An interesting aid
in interpreting the findings is to combine algebraically the four
measures by standardizing each and then summing for each
subject.5 A low score on this general index indicates a tendency,
following the failure experience, toward low mood, a high degree of overgeneralization, attributing the failure to something
about the self, and estimating that others would be able to perform better on the recall task. Psychologically, a low score would
seem to reflect a generally negative self-evaluative reaction to
the failure experience; high scores obviously reflect the opposite
tendencies. The results of this summary index are displayed in
Figure 1.6
The styles of evaluation engendered by private audiences displaying different levels of contingency have implications for a
wide range of self-evaluative phenomena. Striving to achieve in
order to attain the contingent acceptance of a private audience
could be the motivation underlying the psychological perspective that has been termed ego involvement (e.g.. deCharms,

One might wonder if this condition primed other considerations, in

addition to a contingent style of self-evaluation, such as a concern for

impression management. Indeed, it is possible that responses in all conditions reflect to some extent a desire to please or impress the experimenter, as is the case in any study where subjects know their responses
are being recorded. The extent of contribution of these factors may
merit further research or may even be unanswerable (see Tetlock &
Manstead, 1985). One argument against an impression-management
interpretation is that the effects of the manipulations were strongest under conditions fostering private self-awareness, which is assumed to lead
people to respond to personal values and standards rather than to the
demands of the situation (Froming, Walker, & Lopyan, 1982).
5

To adjust the social comparison measure to account for the subject's

own performance, this score was first expressed as a proportionaldifference score, that is, own recall minus estimate of others' performance, divided by own recall.
6

Although the summary index is intended primarily as a descriptive

tool, some statistics may be of interest. Our decision to combine the

individual measures is supported by a significant interaction term in a
multivariate analysis of variance of the four measures, FIR. 102) - 3.5 1,
p< .01 (and this multivariate effect held even if recall, self-esteem, and
additional exploratory measures were included in the analysis). Support
for the index's validity as an indicator of a self-critical style derives from
its correlation with the chronic self-esteem measure: pooled within-cell
r(56) = .52, p < .01. Parallel to the analyses of the individual measures,
the 3 (private audience) X 2 (self-awareness) analysis of variance of the
index yielded a significant interaction, F(2, 53) = 6.16, p< .01. Subjects
with a noncontingent audience who were self-aware scored higher than
their counterparts without a mirror. /(53) = 1.69. p < .05 (one-tailed).
In contrast, those with a contingent audience scored lower if they were
self-aware, r(53) = 3.09,/> < .01 (one-tailed). The control groups' scores
were not significantly affected by the self-awareness manipulation.

MARK w. BALDWIN AND JOHN G. HOLMES

1096

Non-Contingent
<a
-a

c
o

<f--"^ Control
0

01

CO

Contingent

-2'

Mirror
Absent

Mirror
Present

figure 1, Index of self-evaluative reactions by self-awareness and private-audience conditions. (Lower numbers indicate a tendency toward
lower mood, a high degree of overgeneralization, self-attributions for
failure, and estimates that others would perform better. Means based on
n = 10, except contingent audience-mirror condition, for which n = 9.)

1968; Greenwald, 1981). The costs of imposing evaluation on

an activity have been well documented elsewhere (e.g., decreased intrinsic motivation. Plant & Ryan, 1985, and Ryan,
1983; decreased flexibility of response, Amabile, 1979, and
Hcnchy & Glass, 1968). Also, the pattern of cognitions displayed in the contingent condition, ranging from self-attribution to overgeneralization, has been observed in depressed individuals (Beck, 1970; Seligman, Abramson, Semmel, & von
Baeyer, 1979). It would thus be interesting to study the ways in
which the evaluative standards and styles of significant others
in past social relationships intrude on the present to maintain
cycles of depression and low self-esteem (e.g., Higgins, Strauman, & Klein, 1986; Kuiper & Olinger, in press). Such an analysis might include the notion that contingent acceptance can be
entrapping (Platt, 1973), as illustrated by the somewhat counterintuitive findings in our contingent audience condition. Individuals may voluntarily adopt audiences offering praise or admiration, but once this contingent way of thinking becomes
firmly rooted, it may be difficult to maintain a sense of selfacceptance in the face of subsequent failures or transgressions
(see Miller, 1981, for a discussion of the costs of performancecontingent acceptance suffered by gifted children).

In Study 2, self-aware subjects' self-evaluative reactions to a failure experience reflected the evaluative style of a salient private
audience and were negative to the extent that the audience's
acceptance was contingent on success.
Some interesting issues remain for further study. First, the
experiments reported here obviously demonstrate only that salient audiences can affect the behavior of self-aware people but
not that they necessarily do have an impact in less contrived
situations. It is encouraging in this respect to note that subjects
were in no way forced to consider the reactions of the audiences
provided. Particularly in Study 1, self-aware individuals were
influenced by audiences that were only minimally primed in an
ostensibly unrelated context.
A second general issue involves the interface between private
and public audiences (Froming & Carver, 1981; Scheier &
Carver, 1983b; Schlenker, 1980). Behavior is often performed
for both types of audiences, as when an actress tries both to earn
her public audience's applause and to meet the demands of her
internalized drama coach. We have thus far been focusing on
the possibility of the evaluative structures of social relationships
becoming represented internally; another approach would be
to identify cases when private audiences might color the way
actual other people are experienced (cf. transference). A contingent private audience, for example, might be projected onto the
world, with the result that others are seen asevaluative and judgmental.
As these considerations allude, there may be very real benefits
in exploring the similarities and relevance of these notions to
analytic and neoanalytic models of the superego (e.g., Freud,
1923/1947), ego development (e.g., Mahler et al., 1975), and
object relations (e.g., Greenberg & Mitchell, 1983). Are audiences primed outside of awareness perhaps more influential, for
example, and is it possible to bring unconscious audiences into
focal awareness? If so, would this then allow the individual to
defend more actively against undesired influence and therefore
function more autonomously?
In the studies reported here, we tried to test some fairly basic
hypotheses about the experience of self. By abstracting and articulating principles from a number of theories, and integrating
these insights with the dynamics of self-awareness, we attempted to establish the basis for a useful perspective on selfprocesses. We see these studies as offering encouraging support
for a movement toward studying cognitive representations of
significant relationships, which may afford some insight into
the issue of how individuals' personal social histories define
their sense of self.

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Received July 15, 1986
Revision received September 11, 1986