JUN-13-2005 13:34 UMC PHYCHOL SCI The Social Awareness Inventory: Development and Applications ‘Kennon M. Sheldon |. Uninersity of Rechastr ‘The Social Awareness Inventory (SAD, which assesses individ S73 882 7716 P.aL ‘One reason such a model may be timely is that there ‘ual differences in eight social perceptual syles, isintreduadand is confusion regarding many existing social awareness. in three studies. The model is derived ly crossing the related constructs, First, traits conceived of as unitary are three binary dimensions of target (self or other}, perspective (own often measured with scales that are empirically bidimen- orother's), and content (overt appearance ar covert experienc). sional (Briggs & Cheek, 1988; Carver, 1989; Dillard & ‘Studies I and 2 describe the development of the SAL and show Hlunter, 1983). As just one example, the popular Private that its subsooles are menningfuly associated with related con- Sel Consciousness Scale appears to be composed of structs such as public and private self consciousness, empathy, both a SelfReflectiveness factor and an Internal State social ansiaty, and narcssiom. Studies 2and.3exploreajacor Awareness factor (Burnkrant & Page, 1984; Mial & structure ofthe SAT, showing that people high on a sefdzvided Balasubramanian, 1987; Piliavin & Charng, 1988). The factor regulate themseles according to environmental contro, items that load on the Self Reflectivenest factor seem to st more self presentational seivings, and arehigher on neurot imply “standing at a distance” from oneself, and the ciem and depression. In contrast, people high on.aselfgrounded factor has been linked to measures of identity seeking factor tend tobe autonomy eviented. The SAL appears to provide and low selfesteem. Ia contrast, the Internal State ‘at integrative conceptual and empirical framework for consd- Awareness icems imply a state of selfcongruence, and ring many personality and motivational construc the factor has been shown to be negatively related to saesugy raking Gilints fe Cherng, 1088). "There increalng recognition that res obtained wid sock Svocatsvaceneses, broadly defined are mentalerents tally dal sales can be quite dic to interpret in which one forms a mental representation of either ‘oneself or another person (Wegner & Guiliano, 1989). (Carver, 1989; Hull, Lehn, & Tedlie, 1991). Confusion is also treated by the poorly understood conceptual duality that many social awareness constructs “Many personality constructs are characterizable in social fs : Yor example, pubic and private alt *2om0 have. For example, although private and public consciousness (Fenigstein, Scheler, f Buss, 1975), social amodiety (Leary, Kowalski, & Campbell, 1988), narcissism: self consciousness both imply focal awareness of the scl, they seem to differ in the perspective thats taken on the ans Leary va Campbell 186), rarcsin SST excel rin nema cfvelisced us & Chino, 190: Mile, 180), and demesne: Seats expenene we. Pisa spare). Tl seem to involve dispositional seffawareness, In contrast, constructs such as emotional (Mehrabian & Epstein, 1072) and cognitive empathy (Davie, 1980), social acuity (Funder & Harris, 1986), and soclal sensitivity Riggio, ambiguity has cansed great contention (eg., Carver & Scheier, 1987; Fenigstcin, 1987; Gollwitzer & Wicklund, ‘Tucker, & Coffaro, 1989) can all be considered forms of — Auor’s Note: I thank Ea Deci, Andtew Eliot, Virgin Crow, Joel dispositional ochevawareness. This article presents dif- Johnson, and Tom Enuer for their valuable aiaquee of eater verdont ferentiated model of social awareness forms and an of di ardcle. Correspontience sould be associated personality inventory. The madel offers a Deparment of Prychology, Unhersiy of aenteat in Uhich to ceamine sctiakcoguitive common, 1402/+Emal sheldont@procgalpayc.rochesteredn. alities and differences underlying a wide variety of per- Papa, VoL. 22 No.6,June 1996 620684 sonality variables, {©1880 he Soceyfor Pernt and Soil Pryciology Ine 620 12 Ken Sheldon, ef, Rochenet, NYJUN-13-2005 13:35. UMC PHYCHOL SCI 1987).! The framework outlined below is imtended, in Part, o help shed new light on such issues. ‘THE MODEL, Assumptions of the Model ‘The term socal auzreness, herein, will refer to a com textualized cognizance either of oneself or of another person. Social avarenemes present percon-perceptual information that is of potential relevance to one's social objectives. For example, to influence another person, one might pay particular attention to how one appears to that person so that one can adjust one’s social mance as necessary (Goffman, 1959; Sheldon & Johnson, 1993). This functional understanding is consis- ‘ent with cybernetic models of selfregulation (Carver & Schcies, 1981, 1990; Hyland, 1988; Mithaug, 1998), in ‘which moments of awareness alow situational informa- tion to be evaluated in terms of goals or reference standards so that discrepancies can be identified and reduced. Thus social awarenesses may be seen as essen- Gal for social self-regulation. Another assumption of this research is that people have enduring habits or styles of attending to social information. These social awareness dispositions are ‘conceived of as cognitive (rather than affective or behav- oral) traits (Emmons, 1989b). A final assumption is that social awareness dispositions derive from chronic social goals and motives (Franzoi, Davis, & Markweise, 1990) andrreflect the enduring informational needs generated. by such motives, For example, people who habitually “put themselves in others’ shoes” may do so because of strong need for intimacy (McAdams, 1985; Sheldon & Jonson, 1998). By constructing such empathic awarenesses, they ongoingly acquire information that helps them to bridge the gap between themselves and others? Dimensions ofthe Model In light of the conceptual dualities noted above, itis jawiguing that in Carver and Scheier's (1981, 1982) ‘model of attention, avarenesses have a twofold nature. ‘That is, they involve a representation of one's current state or behavior, matched to some standard or criterion. Generalized, this implies that awarenesses consist of both an objec of attention and an evaluative context in ‘which that object is framed. This idea converges with a model of social awareness proposed by Wegner and Guillano (1982, 1983), who suggested that awarenesses Ihave both a “focal” and a “tacit” dimension. The focus (or target) of an awareness is what it is explicitly about, whereas the tacit aspect of an awareness concerns the S73 882 7714 = -P.@2 Sheldon / SOCIAL AWARENESS INVENTORY 621 implicit perspective or vantage point from which the target appears. Wegner and Guiliano's (1982) model identified four basic forms of dyadic social awareness by specifying that either self or other can provide the tacit standpoint from which either self or other is focalized. For clarity the focal aad tacit dimensions will henceforth, be referred to as the tart and the perpedtive of an awareness. Going beyond the target and perspective dimensions, Figurski (1987) identified a third, content-based dimen- sion of social awareness, He observed that one may be aware of elther how the target appears (this includes physical characteristics and overt behavior) or what the target is experiencing (.e., thinking and/or fecling).* Grossing the target, perspective, and content dimen- sions would yield a taxonomy consisting of eight basic awareness forms. However, Figurski (1987) recognized only four forms in his model by assuming that a given person's perspective, once taken, allows privileged access to that person’s experience or to another's appearance and no access to that person's appearance or to an- other's experience. Thus Figurtki's model specifies that fone can be.aware of (a) self experience/from the self perspective (as may occur when we attempt to under stand our own anger), (b) self appearance/from the other's perspective (as may occur when we appear in public in a new bathing suit), (¢) the other's expert ‘cnce/from the other's perspective (as may occur when, we “feel for another person’), or (d) the other's appear- ance/from the self perspective (as may occur when we laugh at someone's necktie). Figurski's (1987) assummp- tion excludes the possibility that one might experience sonpriviloged awareness of (e) self appearance/from the self perspective (as may occur when anorexics insist they are too fat, despite others’ protests), (f) self experi- cence/from the other's perspective (as may occur when ‘we visita therapist), (g) the other’sexperience/from the self perspective (as may occur when we deny another's right to feel insulted), or (h) the other's appearance/ ffom the other's perspective (as may occur when we notice a teenager's obsession with his or her complexion), To show that a full crossing of the target, perspective, and content dimensions is warranted, Sheldon and Johnson (1998) created definitional statements for the ight forms of social awareness described above and asked participants to estimate how often they experience ‘ach awareness forna. They found that people do report experiencing dhe four nonprivileged awareness forms, but less frequently than the corresponding privileged forms. In two studies, this effect took the form of ahighly significant three-way interaction between the withia- subject factors of target. content, and perspective as predictors of awareness frequency,ee sii RE TUN-13-2885 13:35 (UMC PHYCHOL SCT 573 982 7714 = P.@3 622 PERSONALITYAND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN Consistent with the assumption that social awareness dispositions derive from underlying social motives, Sheldon and Johnson (1993) also showed that people ‘high in intimacy motivation and nurturance needs make ‘more frequent use of others’ perspectives in viewing ‘others’ experiences, whereas perrons high in power mo- ‘vation and dominance needs tend to retain their own perspective on others’ experiences. People high in power motivation alo tend to pay mote attention to self appearance than to self experience. The Current Research Following Sheldon and Johnson (1993), an eightcell taxonomy was adopted. The model presented in Table 1 specifies that during a particular moment ofsocial aware ness one attends io either the appearanceor the experience ‘of either sefor other, from either one's oam or the other's ‘psychological perspective. Study 1 presents scales to ax sess individual differences in the tendency to use these ‘ight awareness forms, examines the factor structure of the eight scales, and provides preliminary validational evidence by examining their relationship to two existing social awareness constructs, private and public self consciousness. Study 2 shows that the social awareness framework can be applied to consider other trait con structs, such as empathy, narcissism, and social anxiety, and also examines the relationship of the Social Awareness Inventory's (SAI) two factors to neuroticism ‘and depression. Study 3 uses selfetermination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985b, 1991) to further develop the idea that social awareness dispositions relate to specific mot vational or selfregulatory styles. sTuDYI Overview and Hypotheses Participants responded to a pool of candidate items, from which eight internally consistent subscales were de rived. In addition, they completed the Publicand Private ‘SeléConsciousness Scales (Fenigstein etal, 1975). Tn accordance with the ideas that pedple high n private selfconscioumess attend to their inner thoughts and feelings (Fenigstein et al, 1975) and are motivated pr ‘marily by 2 desire for selBknowiedge (Franzoi et al, 1990), itwas expected that the Private Self Consciousness Seale ‘would be strongly correlated with the tendency to be aware of “self experience/from the self perspective.” However asmoted above, the Private elf Conscioumess Scale has been shown to consist ofboth an “internal state awareness” and a “selfreflectiveness” factor (Burnkrant, & Page, 1984; Mittal & Balasubramanian, 1987; Piliavin & Chamg, 1988), One goal of the study was to examine these two factors in termsof the present social awareness model, Because the zelfreflectivenees factor hav been related to identity seeking (Piliavin % Charng, 1088), 1 hypothesized that people scoring high on it should be significantly more likely to take others’ perspectives on cir private experience than people high in internal state awareness, One way of seeking identity, presumably, is to frequently consider what others would say about one'sown thoughts and feelings. This hypothesis, which involves the awareness form numbered 2in Table 1, was to be examined by means of a ¢ test of the difference between correlations (Cohen & Cohen, 1983). Public selfconsciousness is defined as a disposition to be aware of oneself as a social object (Fenigstein ct al, 1975). This definition suggested that public sel consiousness should be strongly correlated with both awareness forms in which one pays attention to one’s external appearance (i, “self appearance/trom the self perspective” and also “self appearance/from the other's perspective"), That is public sclf-comsciousness ‘may consist of a general tendency to consider how one, looks, from any available point of view. Method Descriptive definitions of all eight awareness forms ‘were provided to two advanced undergraduate assis tants. Descriptions were the same as those used in pre- viousresearch (Sheldon & Johnson, 1998). For example, a descriptive definition that exemplifies otherawarencss, otherperspective, and appearance awareness is "T tend, ‘to payattention to the appearance and behavior of other people, and I tend to think about them from the other's point of view.” ‘The assistants wrote items to fit the eight categories. From these a pool of 20 candidate items was selected for ceach of the cight categories (included in cach pool was the descriptive definition for that category), All items ‘were worded straightforwardly, without reversals. This was doue because most of the items were already some- what complex, referring to both a target figure and a perspective taken on that figure. A primary goal of Study 1 was to identify eight eubscales with alpha cocfi cients of at least.70. ‘A questionnaire packet was created, in which the 160 tems were arranged in a recurring order such thatevery ninth item began a repetition of the cycle. Following: these 160 items were the Public and Private Self Consciousness subscales (17 items). The response op- tions forall items were very uncharacteristic of me, someahat uncharaderistic of me, somewhat charaderistc of ma and very charaderistic of me. In addition to a public and private selFconsciousness score, each subject received scores for the two factors underlying the Private SelFConsciousess Scale (Piiavin & Charng, 1988).* ‘Participants were 306 undergraduates at the Univer- sity of California, Davis, who participated for class credit.JUN-13-2005 13!36. UMC PHYCHOL SCI S73 882 771 -P.84 Sheldon / SOCIAL AWARENESS INVENTORY 633 ‘TABLE: Eight Forms of Socal Awareness Descriptions and Beample Items Safes Tone theres Tage Content ‘Saf Pecpecioe Others Pepe Sa Pentecin tars Pespcive Beperience o @ © © Seltexperience/fromself Self experience/fomt Odver'sexperience/trom Others experience/trom perpective others perspective se perspective other's perepective rvteged) (Nonprivieged) @rtleged) (Nonpeinteged) “Wren someting upsets -—“SometimerTdon'thow —“Teisuuallyeamyforme to “More shan mas put ‘me,{ thinks lot abourwny what Tm{ecting undlsome gue outwhyodersfeel_ mayselFin another's shoes” Toe upset” ‘ody else.” he way ney do" Appenonce ® ” o ® Seappearance/fiom se Self appearance/trom Others sppearance/from Others appeaance/Eom perspective ‘other's perspective self perpecive obher' perspective (rivleges) (Nonpriicged) (@riteges) (Nonpeteeges) “ike ooking st myclt ‘Tie toknowhowHlock “When people He ome, ‘ese unl pickup the ‘when Thnow Hook good” wathera™ ‘fin caich them, because "fac that a person is ‘es vice and eyes give pleased about the way them aay he/she looks” ‘The materials were administered in group sessions. ‘Three participants did not answer all the questions and ‘were eliminated from sut it analyses. The final sample of 308 consisted of 122 men and 181 women. Renults Initial analyses focused on identifying, for cach of the ‘ight awareness forms, the single most internally consis- tent Stem set, After repeated reliability analyses, 64 items were identified and retained. All subscales demon- strated internal consistency exceeding the goal of 70, except the subscale assesiing awareness of “other's expe- rience/from the self perspective” (alpha 68). No re- tained item correlated more strongly with another subscale than with its own. Each subject was then as- signed a score on cach of the awareness forms by sum sing responses across the 8 retained items within each subscale. Table 2 gives alpha coefficients for each subscale and also presents the intercorrelations of the eight subscales. ‘As can be seen, there were substantial asrociations ‘between subscales. To clarify these, a principal compo- nents analysis of the eight subscale scores was per formed. In this analysis a large first component (42% of ‘the variance) emerged, on which every subscale loaded 45 ot higher (unrotated). One other component also ‘emerged, which explained 22% of the variance. Table 3 presents the rotated loadings of the eight subscales on the two factors for all three studies reported herein, The ‘oblique solution is presented because the cight aware- ness dispositions are not assumed to be orthogonal to ‘one another (however, orthogonal rotations yieldedvery similar solutions). Five subscales loaded .60 or more on the first factor: the four awareness forms in which the other is target and also the ‘self experience/from the self perspective” form. The other three acales loaded £0 ‘ormore on the second factor: ‘self appearance from the other's perspective,” “self experience/from the other's perspective,” and “self appearance/from the self per spective." Table 3 shows that there was virtually no crost- loading. However, the {wo oblique factors were moderately correlated (r= .26). For reasons 10 be dis- cussed below. the two SAI factors were given the labels Sel€Grounded and SelfDivided. ‘Overall, the most strongly endorsed awareness form ‘was “self experience/from the self perspective” (M = 24.6), followed by “other's appearance/from the self perspective” (M=24.1),> Pairedsample t tests revealed that these two means differed from the other six means ‘but did not differ from each other. These two awareness forms were aso rated as most frequently experienced in carlier research (Sheldon & Johnson, 1998); the order- {ing comporis with soctal-cogniuve findings by Johnson (1987), Johnson, Struthers, and Bradlee (1988), and Prentice (1990) showing that people define themselves in terms of their own thoughts and feelings and think of others mostly in terms of overt appearance of ‘behavior. ‘A multivariate analysis of variance on the eight subscale scores with target, perspective, anid content as ‘wolevel within-subject factors revealed a highly signifi- ‘cant threeway interaction between the three factors,