Self Awareness

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 35, 415–440 (1999)
Article ID jesp.1999.1388, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on
Self-Awareness and Feeling Transparent:

Failing to Suppress One’s Self
Jacquie D. Vorauer
University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
and
Michael Ross
University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Received February 25, 1998; revised December 3, 1998; accepted December 4, 1998
Three studies examined the relationship between self-awareness and perceptions of

‘‘transparency,’’ that is, individuals’ beliefs about the degree to which their personal
qualities can be accurately discerned from their behavior. Study 1 explored the relation of
dispositional self-consciousness to feelings of transparency. Study 2 examined the effects
of state self-awareness on feelings of transparency. Study 3 investigated individuals’
perceptions of transparency in an evaluative context that induced self-awareness and in a
relatively nonevaluative context. Across all three studies, increased self-awareness was
associated with increased feelings of transparency. Observer data obtained in Study 2
confirmed that self-awareness impairs perspective-taking on the self: Individuals were
most likely to overestimate their transparency to an observer under conditions fostering
self-focused attention. r 1999 Academic Press
There is only one thing, and only one in the whole universe which we know more about than
we could learn from external observation. That one thing is [ourselves]. We have, so to
speak, inside information; we are in the know.
—C. S. Lewis, 1955
Address correspondence and reprint requests to Jacquie Vorauer, Department of Psychology, Duff Roblin
Building, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 2N2, Canada. E-mail: vorauer@cc.umanitoba.ca.
This article is based in part on a doctoral dissertation submitted by Jacquie Vorauer to the University
of Waterloo. The research was facilitated by SSHRCC doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships and a
University of Manitoba research grant to the first author and an SSHRCC research grant to the second
author. We thank Dan Bailis, Mark Baldwin, Roger Buehler, Cathy McFarland, and Ken Savitsky for
their helpful comments on earlier drafts, and are grateful to Gemma Briggs, Tammy Brunk, and Terese
Pizzamiglio for their valuable assistance with data collection.
415
0022-1031/99 $30.00
Copyright r 1999 by Academic Press
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
jesp. 1388
@xyserv2/disk3/CLS_jrnl/GRP_jesp/JOB_jesp35-5/DIV_322k01 mary
No. of Pages—26 First page no.—415 Last page no.—440
416 VORAUER AND ROSS
Individuals possess a wealth of self-knowledge based on their past behaviors

and their inner thoughts, feelings, goals, and intentions. Much of this information
is private, and not readily available to outside observers. But do people realize the
extent to which their self-knowledge is ‘‘inside information’’? Individuals’
perception of the conspicuousness of their attitudes and characteristics may affect
their experience of self and their behavior in the course of social interaction. For
example, people may base their communications and efforts at impression
management on their understanding of the information that another person
possesses about them. The present research examines individuals’ inferences
about the degree to which someone else will be able to discern their personal
qualities from their actions and remarks. We explore people’s propensity for
adopting an outside perspective on their own behavior, whereby they recognize an
observer’s relatively limited access to their enduring traits and inner feelings.
Gauging the personal information conveyed by one’s own actions and remarks
is not an easy task. Different people may attach discrepant interpretations to the
same behavior, particularly if they possess contrasting personalities or if they do
not share a common social or cultural background: What one person perceives as
self-confidence, another might perceive as aggressiveness. Behavior might be
taken as evidence of either cooperativeness or timidity, happiness or arrogance,
open-mindedness or uncertainty, depending on the schemas and expectations
possessed by the beholder (Fong & Markus, 1982; Markus, Smith, & Moreland,
1985; Miller & Turnbull, 1986).
Individuals’ own personal interpretations of their behavior are apt to be closely
connected to their self-concepts (Markus & Sentis, 1982; Markus & Wurf, 1987).
People’s knowledge of their attitudes, intentions, and personality traits colors how
they perceive their actions. This self-knowledge that individuals apply to the
interpretation of their behavior is largely private, especially at the early stages of
social relationships, when the difference between the information available to self
and the information available to others is maximal. When estimating what is
apparent to a given audience, then, people need to be alert to the possibility that
their own interpretations of their behavior may not be shared by the other person,
who might in fact draw quite contrary conclusions. Moreover, people’s self-
concepts may prompt them to ‘‘go beyond the information given’’ (Bruner, 1957)
in their actions, so that they see meaningful communication in behavior that in
fact leaves an observer uncertain.
A useful metaphor for the problem is provided by research involving a
melody-communication task. Newton (as cited in Griffin & L. Ross, 1991)
demonstrated that communicators can be insensitive to differences in the back-
ground information available to themselves as opposed to an audience. She
assigned one group of participants (‘‘tappers’’) the task of tapping out a melody
for another group of participants (‘‘listeners’’); tappers were asked to estimate
whether listeners would be able to guess the melody that they were tapping.
Tappers believed that listeners would easily be able to deduce the songs they were
tapping, when in fact listeners almost never guessed correctly. Presumably these
jesp. 1388
SELF-AWARENESS AND FEELING TRANSPARENT 417
effects reflect tappers’ failure to appreciate how the orchestration that was
occurring in their mind was contributing to what they were able to hear in their
tapping. The problem explored in the present research is parallel in the sense that
people may fail to appreciate how the self-knowledge that they possess contrib-
utes to what they are able to see in their behavior.
We present a series of studies examining individuals’ beliefs about the quantity
of accurate personal information conveyed by a limited sample of their behavior.
Our analysis centers on the idea of ‘‘transparency.’’ People feel transparent when
they sense that another person can discern their true attributes from their remarks
and behavior: They perceive that the other person has ready access to their
personal qualities and that his or her judgments of their traits will be congruent
with their own. They feel, essentially, that their self is out there for the world to
see. Our guiding hypothesis was that self-awareness1 increases individuals’
feelings of transparency. Thus the present research was designed to build on the
considerable literature indicating that people’s metaperceptions are more highly
correlated with their self-concepts than are their audience’s actual impressions
(Kenny & DePaulo, 1993; Shrauger & Schoeneman, 1979) by pinpointing when
this bias is apt to be exacerbated.
Role of Self-Awareness
It is possible to identify two key mechanisms by which self-awareness could
enhance people’s sense of the extent to which their self is readily apparent to
others. These two mechanisms likely work in concert to enhance feelings of
transparency. The first focuses on individuals’ own interpretations of their
behavior, and the second focuses on their efforts to imagine an outside observer’s
distinct perspective on that behavior. In each case the potential influence of
self-awareness stems from its direct connection to the salience of self-knowledge.
According to self-awareness theory, when people are self-aware their conscious-
ness is focused on their thoughts and feelings, their personal history, their body, or
other personal aspects of themselves (Duval & Wicklund, 1972). A substantial
body of research verifies that self-referent information is particularly accessible to
individuals who are high in dispositional self-consciousness (Turner, 1978, 1980;
Turner, Gilliland, & Klein, 1981). Research has also identified stimuli such as
audiences, cameras, and mirrors that can induce a state of self-awareness and
render self-referent information accessible (e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1978; Geller
& Shaver, 1976).
Consider, first, how this heightened accessibility of self-knowledge might
affect people’s own interpretations of their behavior. The greater the salience of
self-relevant information, the greater its influence on individuals’ personal judg-
1The term self-awareness is typically used to refer to the state in which the self is taken as the object
of attention, and the term self-consciousness is used to refer to the dispositional tendency to consider
the self as an object (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975). We follow this convention in the present
article, except that we also use the term self-awareness to refer in an inclusive way to both the state and
the trait.
jesp. 1388
ments about their actions and remarks is likely to be. Numerous investigations
have demonstrated that inferences are guided by chronically accessible and
recently primed constructs (see Higgins, 1989, for a review). For example, when
the trait ‘‘adventurous’’ has been primed, individuals are more likely to see
another person’s ambiguous behavior as containing evidence of this trait (Hig-
gins, Rholes, & Jones, 1977). In a similar fashion, people should be especially apt
to see their own actions as conveying information congruent with their personal
attributes and attitudes when they are self-aware. Thus, a woman’s belief that she
is an assertive person should exert a stronger influence on how she views a remark
that she makes to a colleague if she is self-focused. Her salient self-belief may
lead her to see personal information where he deduces either no information or
impressions that are not congruent with her self-belief. Such changes in individu-
als’ own perceptions of their behavior should have consequences for their
estimates of an audience’s impressions. People generally tend to assume that
another person’s judgments will be at least somewhat congruent with their own
(Marks & Miller, 1987; see also Kenny & DePaulo, 1993). Seeing more of one’s
self in one’s own behavior should therefore translate into higher feelings of
transparency, whereby an outside observer is expected to see this as well. In sum,
self-awareness might enhance feelings of transparency because individuals are
more apt to see their self in their behavior when self-relevant information is
salient.
The second mechanism by which self-awareness might increase feelings of
transparency centers on the act of perspective-taking itself, that is, the point where
individuals must estimate whether or not someone else’s perceptions of their
behavior will agree with their own. This judgment is distinct from behavior
interpretation in that people could conceivably see a lot of their self in their
actions and remarks but conclude that another person would see something else.
The mental feat involved in considering one’s behavior from the point of view of
an external observer who does not have access to one’s own private self-
knowledge is captured well by Hodges and Wegner’s (1997) description of
perspective suppression, which involves trying to abandon one’s own personal
perspective. Why might the already challenging task of suppressing one’s own
point of view be even more challenging for individuals who are self-aware? Again
the answer lies in the direct connection between self-awareness and the salience
of self-knowledge. It may be more difficult to appreciate alternative perspectives
when one’s own point of view is highly accessible. This contention is consistent
with Higgins’ (1981) speculation that role-taking varies in difficulty ‘‘depending
on the extent to which competing information relating to one’s own characteris-
tics and viewpoint is accessible and salient’’ (p. 129), and with research and
theory linking self-focused attention to egocentric cognition (e.g., Fenigstein,
1984; Fenigstein & Vanable, 1992; Hass & Eisenstadt, 1990). Research indicating
that self-aware individuals are more likely to exhibit a false-consensus effect by
assuming that others’ attitudes and preferences are congruent with their own
(Fenigstein & Abrams, 1993) is particularly relevant to the idea that self-
jesp. 1388
awareness impedes perspective-taking. Thus a second route by which self-

awareness might enhance people’s feelings of transparency is through increasing
their tendency to assume that someone else’s judgments about their behavior will
agree with their own personal judgments about it.
We view the two mechanisms described above as complementary rather than
competing explanations for the phenomenon. That is, we suspect that self-
awareness typically fosters heightened feelings of transparency through both
behavior interpretation and reduced perspective-taking: Self-aware persons may
be especially inclined to interpret their actions and remarks in light of salient
self-knowledge as well as to assume that another person will share their interpre-
tations. Regardless of the relative contribution of each mechanism, however, it is
the salience of self-knowledge that should ultimately drive individuals’ sense that
their self is readily apparent to others.
Public versus Private Self-Awareness

A distinction has been maintained in the literature between private and public
self-awareness. Private self-awareness involves a focus on one’s inner thoughts,
feelings, and motives, whereas public self-awareness reflects a concern with how
one is viewed by others (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975; Scheier & Carver,
1983). We expected that both types of self-awareness would be positively
associated with feeling transparent to others. Our reasoning was based on research
evidence indicating that although public and private self-awareness can have
distinct behavioral consequences (see Scheier & Carver, 1983), their effects on
cognition are parallel in an important way: Investigators have demonstrated
repeatedly that both public (e.g., Turner et al., 1981) and private self-awareness
(e.g., Carver & Scheier, 1978) are associated with the enhanced accessibility of
self-relevant information. Because the accessibility of self-relevant information is
the central factor in our analysis, we anticipated that self-awareness would
enhance individuals’ perceptions of transparency, irrespective of the public/
private distinction. In making this prediction we did not mean to deny potentially
important differences in the phenomenology of the two forms of self-awareness.
Indeed, we suspect that in each case the process by which self-relevant informa-
tion becomes accessible differs in a way that reflects this distinct phenomenology.
For public self-awareness, accessibility may be triggered primarily by a desire to
assess how one appears to an audience. This desire to know how one is viewed
may be associated with the recruitment of knowledge that might provide insight
into how the other views the self. Thus self-knowledge may be accessed as a
means to an end. For private self-awareness, reflection on one’s traits and attitudes
may constitute more of an end in itself. Our prediction of a general link between
self-awareness and feelings of transparency was based on our belief that acces-
sible self-relevant information would be associated with feelings of transparency
regardless of why the information was accessible.
We investigated the connection between self-awareness and perceptions of
transparency in three studies. In Study 1, we examined the relation of disposi-
jesp. 1388
tional public and private self-consciousness to feelings of transparency. In Study

2, we examined the effects of state self-awareness by manipulating whether
individuals reflected on their personal qualities before making their transparency
judgments. In Study 2 we also obtained the judgments of observers so that we
could compare individuals’ feelings of transparency with their actual transparency
to others. Study 3 was designed to provide an additional demonstration of a link
between situationally induced self-awareness and feelings of transparency: We
examined individuals’ perceptions of the personal information revealed by their
behavior in an evaluative context that induced self-awareness as well as in a
relatively nonevaluative context.
STUDY 1
In Study 1, individual differences in self-consciousness were assessed with the
scale developed by Fenigstein et al. (1975). This self-consciousness scale is
composed of three components: private self-consciousness, public self-conscious-
ness, and social anxiety. The private self-consciousness factor concerns attention
to one’s inner thoughts and feelings (e.g., ‘‘I reflect about myself a lot,’’ ‘‘I’m
generally attentive to my inner feelings’’). The public self-consciousness factor
refers to an awareness of the self as a social object (e.g., ‘‘I’m usually aware of my
appearance,’’ ‘‘I’m concerned about my style of doing things’’). Finally, social
anxiety refers to discomfort in the presence of others (e.g., ‘‘It takes me time to
overcome my shyness in new situations,’’ ‘‘Large groups make me nervous’’).
Fenigstein et al. (1975) characterized the first two components as both referring
to a process of self-focused attention; they considered the third to be a reaction to
that process. Although we expected that both public and private self-conscious-
ness would enhance individuals’ perceptions of transparency, we did not expect
that social anxiety would be positively connected to these perceptions. This trait
reflects discomfort experienced in group contexts and in novel social situations,
rather than a general tendency to focus attention on the self (Breck & Smith, 1983;
Pozo, Carver, Wellens, & Scheier, 1991). Indeed, Turner (1978) found that social
anxiety was significantly correlated with longer response latencies for judging the
self-descriptiveness of both positive and negative traits. In addition, Greenwald,
Bellezza, and Banaji (1988) demonstrated a negative relationship between social
anxiety and the number of items of self-knowledge listed on an open-ended
self-concept assessment. In light of the theory behind our predictions for self-
consciousness, it seemed that social anxiety—which is conceptually related to
self-consciousness but not associated with self-knowledge accessibility—might
instead have a negative relationship to feelings of transparency. The idea that
socially anxious persons might experience lower feelings of transparency is also
consistent with the theory that these persons generally doubt that an audience will
view them in the way that they would like (Schlenker & Leary, 1982). We
therefore included it in our analyses as an exploratory measure. Notably, although
considerable research has documented the relatively negative self-views (e.g.,
Greenwald et al., 1988; see Schlenker & Leary, 1982, for a review) and
jesp. 1388
metaperceptions (Kenny & DePaulo, 1993; Pozo et al., 1991; Ryan, Plant, &
Kuczkowski, 1991) that accompany social anxiety, to our knowledge the issue of
whether socially anxious persons generally tend to feel transparent or misunder-
stood has not been previously addressed.
We sought to assess the relation of self-consciousness to individuals’ percep-
tions of transparency independently from the effects of self-consciousness on
behavior; consequently, we attempted to hold behavior constant. We had partici-
pants solve multiple-choice personal dilemma problems that had ‘‘obvious’’
answers, so that their decisions would be easy to make and generally nondiagnos-
tic of their personal qualities.
The dependent measure reflected our interest in people’s perceptions of the
amount of personal information revealed by their behavior. We asked participants
to judge the degree to which their solutions to the dilemmas would provide an
outside observer with diagnostic information about their character. They esti-
mated the number of personality traits that another person could accurately
discern from their answers. Their feelings of transparency were indicated by the
number of traits they considered to be discernible.
The traits that individuals considered were selected to range in terms of their
level of observability. Thus we were able to assess whether self-consciousness
was associated with general feelings of transparency or feelings of transparency
that were most pronounced with respect to particular types of trait dimensions. A
central tenet of self-awareness theory is that ‘‘which dimension will become
salient will be determined through the situational context, or . . . the chronic
importance of certain personal dimensions’’ (Duval & Wicklund, 1972, p. 8).
Previous research indicates that individuals high in private self-consciousness are
apt to define themselves in terms of internal rather than external characteristics
(Cheek & Briggs, 1982) and are apt to possess self-schemas that focus on covert
aspects of self rather than on the self as a social object (Agatstein & Buchanan,
1984); the converse is true for individuals high in public self-consciousness. Thus
a key possibility in the present study was that private self-consciousness would be
more clearly related to the feeling that covert aspects of self (low observability
traits) were obvious to an observer than to the feeling that overt aspects of self
(high observability traits) would be judged accurately; the opposite was possible
for public self-consciousness. Such a pattern would underscore how feelings of
transparency are tied to especially accessible self-relevant information.
Method
Participants. Fifty-one undergraduates at the University of Manitoba (31
women and 20 men) participated in the study to earn course credit.
Procedure. Participants first completed the self-consciousness scale (Fenigstein
et al., 1975); they answered each item on a 5-point scale, where 1 ⫽ strongly disagree
and 5 ⫽ strongly agree. Participants then responded to three problems centering
on personal relationships. Each problem was accompanied by a set of four
possible solutions; participants circled the one solution they considered to be the
jesp. 1388
best. Three of the possible solutions were designed to be obviously unreasonable.

The first problem situation was as follows:
Four months ago, you hired the daughter of a friend to do clerical work. She hasn’t worked
out all that well. Her computer skills aren’t great, and she hasn’t handled some of her
responsibilities very well. It is clear, though, that she is trying very hard to do her best. Her
father has done many favors for you over the years, and you value his friendship very much.
He believes that his daughter is brilliant, and has repeatedly told you that she loves her job.
a. I would assign another employee to keep an eye on the daughter, and to cover up her
mistakes.
b. I would let the daughter go.
c. I would try to force the daughter to quit by making her working conditions difficult.
d. I would provide the daughter with extra training.
Feelings of transparency were assessed with a checklist task. Participants

indicated whether or not another person would be able to accurately judge their
standing on each of 30 trait dimensions from their responses to the problem
situations. They responded either yes or no beside each trait. We selected these
dimensions from a larger set of traits presented by Rothbart and Park (1986), on
the basis of observability and favorability data provided by these authors and by
Funder and Dobroth (1987). We included 15 high observability (e.g., witty,
complaining) and 15 low observability traits (e.g., faithful, resentful); each of
these observability categories contained an equal number of positive (e.g.,
good-natured, perceptive), neutral (e.g., methodical, talkative), and negative (e.g.,
conceited, unethical) traits.2,3
Results
We first examined whether we achieved our goal of eliciting identical behavior
samples from all participants. As anticipated, there was a great deal of consensus
across students regarding the appropriate solutions to the dilemmas. Only nine
participants failed to choose the expected answer for all three problems. To
control for the potential influence of behavior on feelings of transparency, we
created a variable signifying whether a given participant deviated from the
expected answers (yes ⫽ 1 and no ⫽ 0) and included it as a factor in the
regression analyses described below.
Participants’ feelings of transparency along low and high observability trait
dimensions were computed from the number of traits they perceived as discern-
2Note that the adjective checklist measure did not allow us to assess participants’ beliefs about the
positivity of the impressions that they conveyed. For example, participants’ perception that the trait
‘‘wise’’ was transparent might reflect that they believed that their wisdom was discernible; alterna-
tively, it might reflect that they believed that their lack of wisdom was discernible. In subsequent
studies, we included a trait-rating task as well as the adjective checklist, so that we could assess
participants’ perceptions of the positivity of the impressions conveyed as well as perceived transpar-
ency.
3For the entire 30-item transparency scale, Cronbach’s ␣ averaged .82 across the three studies (.77,
.90, .79). For the 15-item high observability index, the average ␣ was .69 (.64, .84, .60); for the
15-item low observability items index, the average ␣ was .72 (.67, .81, .68).
jesp. 1388
TABLE 1
Study 1: Descriptive Statistics
Mean Standard deviation
Feelings of transparency
High observability trait dimensions (15 traits) 7.82 2.65
Low observability trait dimensions (15 traits) 5.86 2.67
Overall (30 traits) 13.68 4.59
Self-consciousness scale components
Private self-consciousness 3.40 .43
Public self-consciousness 3.63 .58
Social anxiety 3.29 .82
Note. N ⫽ 50 for all variables.
ible. Participants’ scores on the three self-consciousness variables (i.e., private,

public, and social anxiety) were computed by averaging participants’ scores
across the relevant scale items. Descriptive statistics are presented in Table 1. The
data were analyzed in two separate regressions for low and high observability trait
dimensions respectively. Private self-consciousness, public self-consciousness,
social anxiety, and the behavior variable were entered simultaneously as predic-
tors.4,5 The results of the regression analyses are summarized in Table 2. Consider
first the results for the low observability traits. As predicted, the analysis of these
dimensions revealed a significant positive relationship between private self-
consciousness and feelings of transparency, ␤ ⫽ .46, t(45) ⫽ 3.60, p ⬍ .001. For
public self-consciousness there was a nonsignificant trend in the same direction,
␤ ⫽ .25, t(45) ⫽ 1.80, p ⬍ .08. Interestingly, social anxiety was negatively related
to feelings of transparency along these dimensions, ␤ ⫽ ⫺.48, t(45) ⫽ 3.51, p ⫽
.001. The pattern for the high observability traits was somewhat different. Here,
there was no effect for private self-consciousness or for social anxiety. As
predicted, however, there was a significant relationship between public self-
consciousness and feelings of transparency, ␤ ⫽ .35, t(45) ⫽ 2.18, p ⬍ .05.
We then compared the effects along low observability trait dimensions to those
along high observability trait dimensions by analyzing difference scores (see
Smith & Choi, 1982). Felt transparency for high observability traits was sub-
tracted from felt transparency for low observability traits. A regression analysis of
4Preliminary data analysis revealed an extreme multivariate outlier. This case was identified
according to the Mahalanobis distance statistic as significantly different from the rest at p ⬍ .01 (see
Stevens, 1986). It was, accordingly, excluded from analyses.
5Examination of the simple correlations between the scale factors revealed relationships that were
generally consistent with previous research. Public and private self-consciousness were significantly
related, r(48) ⫽ .37, p ⬍ .01. Although public self-consciousness and social anxiety were correlated,
r(48) ⫽ .47, p ⬍ .001, there was no connection between private self-consciousness and social anxiety,
r(48) ⫽ .23, ns. Neither public nor private self-consciousness was significantly related to the behavior
variable, r(48)’s ⫽ .12 and ⫺.17, respectively. However, social anxiety was positively associated with
deviating from the expected answers, r(48) ⫽ .30, p ⬍ .05.
jesp. 1388
TABLE 2
Study 1: Relations of Private Self-Consciousness, Public Self-Consciousness, Social Anxiety, and
Behavior to Feelings of Transparency along Low and High Observability Trait Dimensions
High vs low
Low observability High observability observability Overall
b ␤ t(45) b ␤ t(45) t(45) b ␤ t(45)
Private self-
consciousness 2.84 .46 3.60*** 0.65 .11 — 2.29* 3.49 .33 2.45*
Public self-
consciousness 1.13 .25 1.80 1.61 .35 2.18* — 2.74 .35 2.41*
Social anxiety ⫺1.56 ⫺.48 3.51*** ⫺0.67 ⫺.21 — — ⫺2.23 ⫺.40 2.76**
Deviation from
expected
behavior 3.35 .46 3.73*** 1.84 .26 1.75 — 5.18 .42 3.19**
Note. The t value is not presented if p ⬎ .10.

* p ⬍ .05.
** p ⬍ .01.
*** p ⬍ .001.
these difference scores indicated that the effect of private self-consciousness for
low observability traits was significantly greater than its effect for high observabil-
ity traits, t(45) ⫽ 2.29, p ⬍ .05. There was no evidence of a high/low observability
difference for public self-consciousness or social anxiety. A regression analysis
across all of the traits yielded significant effects for all scale factors. Private and
public self-consciousness had positive relations to overall feelings of transpar-
ency, whereas for social anxiety the relationship was negative. Across all
analyses, deviation from expected answers was associated with higher feelings of
transparency.
Discussion
The findings from Study 1 confirmed our hypothesis that dispositional self-
consciousness is positively related to perceptions of transparency. Individuals
high in self-consciousness believed that another person could accurately discern
more of their traits from a circumscribed sample of behavior than did individuals
low in self-consciousness. The somewhat different patterns of results obtained for
private versus public self-consciousness can be summarized succinctly: Public
self-consciousness was related to feelings of transparency across all of the traits,
whereas private self-consciousness was only related to perceived transparency for
low observability traits. Private self-consciousness was thus associated with a
level of specificity in perceptions of transparency that was consistent with the idea
that feelings of transparency are tied to especially accessible self-relevant informa-
tion.
Finally, the negative relation between social anxiety and feelings of transpar-
ency points to the importance of construct accessibility: Only the personality
jesp. 1388
dimensions centering on the salience of self-relevant information enhanced the

degree to which individuals perceived their traits as transparent. The negative
relationship between social anxiety and feelings of transparency merits further
investigation. It suggests that socially anxious persons, in addition to sensing that
they are viewed negatively by others, may also feel misperceived. Caution in
interpretation is warranted here, however, in light of the exploratory nature of this
aspect of our analyses.
STUDY 2
In Study 2 we began to investigate the effects of state self-awareness on
people’s sense of the extent to which their traits are readily apparent to others. We
maintained the problem-solving task and dependent measure described in Study
1, but relied on an experimental manipulation rather than individual differences to
test the connection between self-focus and feeling transparent. The manipulation
was designed to foster private self-awareness. Self-awareness involves being
aware of one’s status as an object in the world (Duval & Wicklund, 1972).
Research on the effects of self-awareness has typically relied on devices that
‘‘externalize’’ the self (e.g., cameras, mirrors) to create self-focus. A key advan-
tage of such indirect approaches is that they allow investigators to avoid the
problem of demand characteristics that might accompany explicit instructions to
reflect on the self (Wicklund & Gollwitzer, 1987). However, externalization is not
necessary for the inducement of self-focus (Duval & Wicklund, 1972). Moreover,
in contrast to many of the issues pursued by self-awareness researchers (e.g.,
matching behavior to standards), the demand characteristics in the present
research are not at all clear. Hence, we adopted a maximally straightforward
manipulation of private self-awareness in this study. We varied whether individu-
als were required to assess their personality characteristics before judging
whether the characteristics would be transparent to another person. We antici-
pated that when participants were prompted to consider their standing on a trait
dimension prior to estimating what an outside observer would be able to discern,
their self would be more prominent in their mind and they would therefore feel
more transparent. In addition, we included a self-rating task to explore whether
positive or negative self-aspects were more likely to be perceived as transparent
and whether the manipulations would affect the relationship between self-view
positivity and perceptions of transparency. Finally, we obtained the judgments of
observers to assess the extent to which individuals’ feelings of transparency
represented overestimations of their actual transparency to others.
Method
Participants. Forty-two introductory psychology students (15 men and 27
women) at the University of Manitoba participated in the ‘‘problem-solving
study’’ for course credit. Half of the participants served as actors, and the
remainder served as observers. The ratio of men to women was roughly constant
across conditions.
jesp. 1388
Procedure. All actors responded to the three personal-relationships problems

and then completed perceived transparency and self-rating tasks. Actors’ instruc-
tions for completing the latter two tasks depended on their experimental condi-
tion. Those in the No Prime condition first indicated their feelings of transparency.
They were asked to answer yes or no to each adjective according to the following
instructions:
Indicate whether—on the basis of your responses to the problem situations—another person
would be able to accurately judge how well each adjective describes you. That is, if the
person judged how well each adjective described you on a 5-point scale, where 1 ⫽ not at all
and 5 ⫽ extremely, would he/she choose the number that matches how you see yourself?
These actors then rated themselves on each adjective using the 5-point scale.
Actors in the Prime condition made their self-ratings immediately before their
transparency judgments. For each of the 30 adjectives in turn, they first rated
themselves on the 5-point scale and then indicated whether another person would
be able to accurately judge their standing on that dimension from their responses to the
problems (with wording parallel to that described above for the No Prime condition).
Each observer was randomly provided with one actor’s answers to the prob-
lems. Observers described the impressions they formed of the actor along the 30
trait dimensions, on a 5-point scale where 1 ⫽ not at all and 5 ⫽ extremely.
Results
Actors’ responses on the adjective checklist task were summed to create an
index of the total number of traits they felt were transparent. An index of actors’
actual transparency was created by computing the number of traits for which
observers’ impressions did in fact match actors’ self-rating. The computation of
matches necessitated taking pairs as the unit of analysis and treating the perceived/
actual transparency factor as a within-pairs variable. Thus the data were entered
into a 2 (Perceived vs Actual Transparency) ⫻ 2 (Prime vs No Prime) repeated-
measures ANOVA with pairs as the unit of analysis; the first factor was a
within-pairs variable and the second was a between-pairs variable. Results
indicated a significant interaction between the priming manipulation and per-
ceived vs actual transparency, F(1, 19) ⫽ 19.79, p ⬍ .001. Actors felt consider-
ably more transparent when their self-concept was salient (M ⫽ 21.90, SD ⫽
6.08) than when it was not (M ⫽ 13.55, SD ⫽ 5.96), F(1, 36) ⫽ 16.84, p ⬍ .001.6
Actors’ actual transparency did not differ across the two conditions, M ⫽ 6.60
(SD ⫽ 2.91) in the Prime condition and M ⫽ 9.55 (SD ⫽ 2.41) in the No Prime
condition, F(1, 36) ⫽ 2.09, ns. Although the discrepancy between perceived and
actual transparency was stronger in the Prime condition [F(1, 19) ⫽ 69.26, p ⬍
.001, effect size .89] than in the No Prime condition [F(1, 19) ⫽ 5.21, p ⬍ .05,
effect size .46], actors in both conditions significantly exaggerated their transpar-
6The degrees of freedom and error terms used to test simple effects in repeated-measures analyses of
variance were computed according to the formulas provided by Howell (1987).
jesp. 1388
ency. Analyses of perceived transparency that included trait observability as a

within-subjects factor revealed that the effects of the priming manipulation did
not vary according to adjective type.
We calculated within-pairs correlations across the 30 traits between actors’
perceived and actual transparency to explore whether actors were sensitive to
which traits were more or less likely to actually be transparent to the observer.
Results indicated no relation, r ⫽ ⫺.01. This correlation was not affected by the
priming manipulation, F ⬍ 1. We also examined whether actors who felt more
transparent were in fact more transparent to observers. Results indicated no
significant correlation between actors’ overall feelings of transparency and actual
transparency to observers, average within-cell r ⫽ .33, p ⬎ .17.7
To explore whether participants felt that positive aspects of themselves were
more transparent than negative aspects of themselves (or vice versa), we com-
puted within-subject correlations between the positivity of participants’ self-
ratings and whether they felt transparent. That is, we examined whether partici-
pants felt more transparent along trait dimensions for which their self-view was
positive (e.g., extremely good-natured) than they did along dimensions for which
their self-view was negative (e.g., rather unethical). The 10 neutral trait dimen-
sions were not included in this analysis. The average correlation was weak (r ⫽
.15), and a one-way (Prime vs No Prime) ANOVA conducted on these correlations
indicated that the increased feelings of transparency induced by the manipulation
did not involve a special focus on positive or negative aspects of individuals’
self-views, F ⬍ 1. We also examined whether the overall positivity of individuals’
self-view (as indicated by their self-ratings on the positive and negative trait
dimensions) was related to how transparent they felt. Results indicated that
self-view positivity was not connected to feelings of transparency on the 30-item
transparency measure, average within-cell r ⫽ ⫺.13, ns. A parallel analysis
conducted on a transparency index based solely on valenced traits (i.e., excluding
neutral traits) also indicated no connection between positivity and transparency,
average within-cell r ⫽ ⫺.01, ns. Finally, we compared the positivity of actors’
self-views to the positivity of the impressions described by observers. Overall,
actors’ self-ratings were no more positive than observers’ impressions, M ⫽ 3.94
(SD ⫽ .36) and M ⫽ 3.90 (SD ⫽ .48), respectively, t ⬍ 1.
Discussion
The results of Study 2 were consistent with our hypothesis that leading
individuals to focus on their personality traits would enhance their sense that
those traits were readily apparent to others. When participants’ self-concepts were
primed before they made their transparency judgments they indicated that more
traits would be discernible, as compared to participants who did not receive the
priming manipulation. Indeed, the level of perceived transparency for those who
7Significance-testing of average within-cell correlations was conducted according to Rosenthal’s
(1991) method of combining Z’s.
jesp. 1388
received the prime was quite striking, especially given the nondiagnostic nature of
the problem-solving task: On average, these participants felt that 73% of the traits
on the list could be accurately judged by an observer of their choices.
The data obtained from the observers in this study clearly indicate that
enhanced feelings of transparency represent greater transparency overestimation.
Although even participants in the No Prime condition significantly overestimated
the number of traits that an observer could accurately discern, this discrepancy
was almost four times greater in the Prime condition: Here, participants felt
transparent on 15.3 more of the 30 traits than observers were actually able to
judge.
STUDY 3
Study 3 was designed to provide an additional demonstration of a link between
situationally induced self-awareness and feelings of transparency, using a manipu-
lation considerably different than that adopted in Study 2. Many of the everyday
contexts that individuals find involving and impactful are those in which they are
being evaluated by someone else. Consider, for example, applying for a job,
giving a presentation, or asking someone on a date. A substantial body of theory
and research indicates that individuals typically experience a state of self-
awareness when they believe that another person is evaluating them (e.g., Duval
& Wicklund, 1972; Scheier & Carver, 1983). To explore the implications of
self-awareness induced by evaluation for individuals’ feelings of transparency, we
manipulated the extent to which participants experienced the experimental
context as evaluative in nature. To test the impact of context on individuals’
feelings of transparency as precisely as possible, we held behavior constant across
experimental conditions. We manipulated participants’ construal of the situation
only after they had produced the behavior sample on which their judgments were
to be based.
Participants first provided their ‘‘partner’’ in the study with some audiotaped
personal information. The change to an audiotaped format allowed us to examine
the generalizability of the effects obtained in Studies 1 and 2 across different types
of behavior samples. Participants then received the context manipulation. Partici-
pants in the High Evaluative context condition were led to believe that they would
be evaluated by their partner. Participants in the Low Evaluative context condition
were not given this expectation; instead they received instructions designed to
prompt a task focus that would keep them actively engaged in the situation even
though they did not feel that they were being judged. Participants’ feelings of
transparency were subsequently assessed.
Our main prediction was that participants in the High Evaluative condition
would feel more transparent than participants in the Low Evaluative condition.
However, we expected that this effect would be stronger along some trait
dimensions than along others. Self-awareness theory posits that attention will
focus on those self-aspects that are most relevant in the current situation or that
are chronically important to the individual (Duval & Wicklund, 1972). Feelings of
jesp. 1388
transparency should follow self-knowledge salience. Thus, we expected that

enhanced feelings of transparency would be most evident for domains considered
relevant to the evaluation. To test this hypothesis, we had raters code the 30 trait
dimensions which made up the dependent measure in terms of how important
each trait would be to the evaluation in question.
We explored one further specificity prediction in this study. Study 1 provided
some evidence that heightened feelings of transparency associated with self-
awareness may be most pronounced along dimensions of chronic importance to
the individual. In the present study we examined this issue more directly by
assessing the traits that were central versus noncentral to individuals’ self-
concepts several weeks prior to their experimental session. We anticipated that the
context manipulation would exert a greater influence on feelings of transparency
along personally important dimensions than along relatively unimportant dimen-
sions. Central dimensions should be particularly apt to become focal through
self-awareness and should therefore be experienced as more readily apparent to
others.
Note that our hypothesis about the specificity of our effects is relevant to a
possible alternative explanation for a link between being the target of evaluation
and feeling transparent. Conceivably individuals experience considerable anxiety
when they believe that someone else is evaluating them. People’s anxiety may
reduce their ability to engage in the complex cognitive operations involved in
perspective-taking. Individuals’ reduced capacity for adopting an external—and
novel—point of view might account for their egocentric estimates of another
person’s impressions of them. If this is a proper characterization of the process,
increased feelings of transparency should be evident across all trait dimensions:
Individuals should generally assume congruence between their views of them-
selves and others’ impressions of them. If, as we hypothesize, however, enhanced
feelings of transparency reflect self-perceptions consistent with accessible self-
knowledge, feelings of transparency should be specific to those traits for which
self-relevant information is currently activated.
We explored one final issue. Participants described the content of the impres-
sions they thought that they conveyed, so that we could examine whether the
manipulations affected their perceptions in this regard.
VALIDATION STUDY
We conducted a preliminary validation study to ascertain that the context
manipulation would in fact influence individuals’ feelings of self-awareness. The
participants in this study experienced the same procedures as those in the actual
experiment except that instead of reporting their feelings of transparency they
completed a measure of self-awareness. Eight participants were assigned to the
High Evaluative context and eight were assigned to the Low Evaluative context.
We assessed self-awareness with a pronoun-completion exercise (Wegner &
Giuliano, 1983). This task required participants to fill in the blanks in a series of
20 sentences with the pronoun that seemed most appropriate to them. Previous
jesp. 1388
research using this task or close variations of it suggests that people’s preference
for first-person pronouns is associated with their level of self-awareness, as
induced by factors such as mood (Wood, Saltzberg, & Goldsamt, 1990) or the
presence of an audience (Carver & Scheier, 1978). Participants’ responses were
coded according to Salovey (1992): First-person singular pronouns (e.g., I, me)
received a score of 2, first-person plural pronouns (e.g., we, us) were scored 1, and
third-person pronouns (e.g., he, them) were scored 0. As expected, participants in
the High Evaluative condition received higher scores (M ⫽ 26.38, SD ⫽ 3.46)
than participants in the Low Evaluative condition (M ⫽ 22.88, SD ⫽ 2.90), F(1,
15) ⫽ 4.80, p ⬍ .05. Thus, the context manipulation effectively varied partici-
pants’ level of self-awareness.
Method
Participants. Sixty-four undergraduates at the University of Waterloo partici-
pated in the experiment to earn course credit. There were 16 men and 16 women
in each of the two conditions (i.e., High vs Low Evaluative context). These
students had previously participated in a mass testing session in which the
centrality of the 30 trait dimensions to their self-concept had been assessed.
Students indicated whether each trait described them (yes, no, unsure) and how
important their standing on that trait dimension was to their self-concept (using a
5-point scale where 1 ⫽ not at all important to how I see myself and 5 ⫽ extremely
important to how I see myself). Dimensions rated 4 or 5 in importance were
considered central, so long as the participant did not indicate that he/she was
unsure whether to say yes or no to the description question.
Procedure. The experimenter explained that the researchers were interested in
learning about how people deal with interpersonal problems and about what leads
them to prefer particular types of solutions. Participants were presented with a set
of four problems involving personal relationships, each accompanied by a set of
five possible solutions. The problems and solutions were similar to those utilized
in Studies 1 and 2, except here participants tape-recorded their answers.8 The
context manipulation was administered after participants had completed the
problems. All participants were told that they had a partner in the study, an
undergraduate student of the same sex as themselves. Participants in the Low
Evaluative condition were told that in the next part of the study they would work
together with their partner on the problems. They would try to arrive at compro-
8We also varied details of the response format, to explore whether participants’ feelings of
transparency would be affected by the nature of the behavior sample that they considered. Half of the
participants indicated the one solution that they definitely would not try and said nothing else. The
other half of the participants chose the one solution that they definitely would not try and the one
solution they thought was the best. They were told to explain the reasons behind these choices. Finally,
if they liked, they could suggest solutions that were completely different from those provided on the
list or that were a compromise between different solutions on the list. They explained the proposed
solution and why they thought it was better than those provided. Because there were no significant
effects associated with this manipulation, we do not discuss it further.
jesp. 1388
mise solutions that took into account each person’s opinions and to reach an
agreement about how each of the situations should be dealt with. They were told
that they would exchange responses with their partner beforehand so that they
could prepare for the discussion. Participants in the High Evaluative condition
were told that in the next part of the study they would work on a second set of
problems. Whether they worked on these problems together with their partner or
instead completed them on their own would depend on their partner’s preference.
Ostensibly, we were interested in the choices people make about working partners
and in the implications for problem solving of giving people such choices.
Participants would exchange responses to the first set of problems with their
partner; subsequently, their partner would decide whether he/she wanted to work
together or apart on the second set of problems. Their partner was to make the
judgment on the basis of how well he/she thought that the two of them would get
along with one another. Participants were told that we would later ask them to
predict their partner’s decision.
At this point, participants began listening to their own tape and observed the
experimenter take a second copy of the tape to their partner. After participants had
listened to their own tape they completed a ‘‘preliminary’’ questionnaire that
assessed the information the tape conveyed about their personality. To provide a
rationale for the questionnaire to participants in the Low Evaluative condition, the
experimenter explained that participants’ initial impressions of their partner, or
their beliefs about their partner’s initial impression of them, might affect the
course of their problem-solving discussion.
Dependent measures. Participants’ feelings of transparency were assessed with
the adjective checklist task. Participants indicated the traits that they believed
their partner could judge accurately on the basis of their tape-recorded answers to
the problems. Next, actors indicated how well their partner would think each of
the 30 trait adjectives described them, on a 7-point scale where 1 ⫽ not at all and
7 ⫽ extremely. They were instructed to answer the items ‘‘according to how you
think your partner—rightly or wrongly—would judge you.’’
Results
Our main prediction was that participants would feel more transparent in the
High as opposed to the Low Evaluative context condition and that their enhanced
feelings of transparency would be specific to the trait dimensions rendered
accessible by the evaluative decision. To test this hypothesis, we asked 15
undergraduates (10 women and 5 men) to rate the relevance of the 30 adjectives
on the checklist to a decision about whether to work together with someone else.
The coders were told to imagine that they had to make a decision about whether to
work with another person on a problem-solving task; they were given one of the
problems as an example. They then indicated how interested they would be, when
making their decision, in knowing the extent to which the person possessed each
trait on the checklist. They made their judgments on a 7-point scale, where 1 ⫽
not at all and 7 ⫽ extremely interested in knowing the extent to which the person
jesp. 1388
possessed the trait. We used the mean ratings assigned to each trait to categorize
them into equal-sized groups; attributes with a mean rating above 4.8 were
classified as decision-relevant, and those with a mean rating equal to or less than
4.8 were classified as decision-irrelevant. The 15 relevant traits (from most
relevant to least relevant) were as follows: perceptive, open-minded, unethical,
imaginative, wise, good-natured, alert, shrewd, methodical, phony, considerate,
argumentative, rude, complaining, and inexhaustible (M relevance ⫽ 5.42). The
15 irrelevant traits (from most irrelevant to least irrelevant) were sensual,
eccentric, boastful, shy, cowardly, conservative, conceited, reserved, conven-
tional, talkative, resentful, witty, spiteful, quick-tempered, and faithful (M rel-
evance ⫽ 3.76). Notably, the classification of traits in terms of their relevance was
not confounded with their observability. The relevant dimensions included 7 high
and 8 low observability traits; the irrelevant dimensions included 8 high and 7 low
observability traits.
The data were entered into a 2 (High Evaluative vs Low Evaluative context) ⫻
2 (Relevant vs Irrelevant Trait Dimensions) repeated-measures ANOVA, with the
first factor representing a between-subjects variable and the second factor repre-
senting a within-subjects variable. Results confirmed our hypothesis that partici-
pants’ feelings of transparency would be enhanced in the High Evaluative context,
and that these enhanced perceptions of transparency would be specific to those
traits relevant to the decision. The number of decision-relevant traits that
participants felt that their partner would be able to discern was higher in the High
Evaluative context (M ⫽ 8.25, SD ⫽ 3.09) than in the Low Evaluative context
(M ⫽ 6.78, SD ⫽ 2.67), F(1, 89) ⫽ 4.43, p ⬍ .05. In contrast, the number of
decision-irrelevant traits that actors judged as discernible was no higher in the
High Evaluative context (M ⫽ 5.72, SD ⫽ 2.72) than in the Low Evaluative
context condition (M ⫽ 5.50, SD ⫽ 2.66), F(1, 89) ⬍ 1. These effects reflect a
significant context ⫻ relevance interaction, F(1, 62) ⫽ 4.25, p ⬍ .05. The analysis
also yielded a main effect for relevance, whereby more relevant than irrelevant
traits were considered discernible, M ⫽ 7.52 (SD ⫽ 2.96) and M ⫽ 5.61 (SD ⫽
2.67), respectively, F(1, 62) ⫽ 39.56, p ⬍ .001. There were no other effects.
We conducted a separate analysis to examine our hypothesis that the effects of
the context manipulation would be stronger for central than for noncentral aspects
of individuals’ self-concepts. Preliminary examination of the centrality data
revealed that 4 traits were rated as central by a majority of participants and that 13
traits were rated as noncentral by a majority (as indicated by significant chi-square
tests). Moreover, most of the consensual central traits were high in observability,
whereas most of the consensual noncentral traits were low in observability. We
were able to eliminate the potential confounding influence of trait type by
restricting our analysis to the remaining 13 traits, which were rated as central
equally as often as they were rated as noncentral. By examining felt transparency
along these idiosyncratically central and noncentral dimensions, we could be
confident that any observed effects did indeed reflect the influence of trait
jesp. 1388
centrality. This is because overall each trait would be used to calculate central
transparency just as often as it would be used to calculate noncentral transparency.
For each participant the proportion of idiosyncratically central traits judged to
be transparent was calculated, as was the proportion of idiosyncratically noncen-
tral traits judged to be transparent. These data were entered into a 2 (central vs
noncentral) ⫻ 2 (High vs Low Evaluative context) repeated-measures ANOVA,
with the first factor a within-subjects variable and the second factor a between-
subjects variable. This analysis yielded a significant context ⫻ trait centrality
interaction, F(1, 58) ⫽ 11.96, p ⫽ .001. As predicted, the proportion of central
traits judged as transparent was higher in the evaluative context (M ⫽ .45, SD ⫽
.32) than in the nonevaluative context (M ⫽ .26, SD ⫽ .22), F(1, 102) ⫽ 7.26, p ⬍
.01, whereas the proportion of noncentral traits judged as transparent did not differ
across the evaluative and nonevaluative contexts, M ⫽ .30 (SD ⫽ .23) and M ⫽
.38 (SD ⫽ .29), respectively, F(1, 102) ⫽ 1.38, ns. There were no other effects,
Fs ⬍ 1.
To determine whether the context manipulation affected the favorability of the
impression participants thought they conveyed, we computed the positivity of
participants’ perceptions. A t test revealed no significant effect (t ⬍ 1), overall
M ⫽ 4.97 and SD ⫽ .59 on the 7-point scale. This remained the case when we
conducted a parallel analysis considering only those traits that participants
perceived as discernible.
Discussion
The results of Study 3 were consistent with our hypothesis that individuals who
were the target of an evaluative decision would feel more transparent than those
who were not. Moreover, in line with our predictions, the greater feelings of
transparency experienced by participants in the High Evaluative condition were
more pronounced for those trait dimensions that were relevant to the decision that
was ostensibly to be made about them. Enhanced feelings of transparency were
also more evident along dimensions that were important to individuals’ self-
concept. The pattern of focused rather than general increases in perceived
transparency is consistent with the tenet of self-awareness theory that the
situational or chronic importance of a given dimension can determine whether it
becomes salient (Duval & Wicklund, 1972).
Although the findings conformed well to predictions derived from a self-
awareness framework, there are alternative interpretations of the data that need to
be acknowledged. In particular, the focused nature of participants’ feelings of
transparency renders an account in terms of general anxiety implausible but does
not rule out domain-specific anxiety effects. Another possibility is that the results
reflect individuals’ expectations about how much their partner would scrutinize
their tape. Participants in the High Evaluative condition may have felt more
transparent because they believed that their partner would pay closer attention to
what they said, in order to make a good decision. The findings for trait centrality
would seem to pose some difficulty for this interpretation. However, an egocentric
jesp. 1388
version of an expected-scrutiny account in which individuals’ own ideas about the

trait dimensions that are important are imposed on their audience remains viable.
This possibility highlights the likely bidirectional relationship between feeling
transparent and feeling scrutinized. Individuals’ sense of what their audience is
attending to may be driven by what is personally salient to them, so that these
experiences go hand-in-hand and serve to perpetuate each other.
In light of these alternative interpretations, it is clear that Study 3 does not
provide an unequivocal demonstration of a link between self-awareness and
feelings of transparency. The evidence for such a link is more convincing when
the present three studies are considered together. Consistent effects were obtained
across diverse operationalizations of self-awareness. Although each study is open
to alternative explanations, no one alternative seems applicable across all three
studies. Thus we believe that self-awareness provides the most parsimonious
account for all of the findings.
GENERAL DISCUSSION
The results of the present studies indicate that people are least likely to realize
that they are ‘‘in the know’’ about themselves precisely when they are most
immersed in what they know about themselves. Our findings suggest that the
more salient and accessible one’s self-knowledge, the more likely it is to be
experienced as readily available to others. Self-awareness appears to be associ-
ated with a reduced propensity to appreciate the limited amount of personal
information conveyed by a small sample of one’s own actions and remarks.
The present findings regarding the perceived transparency of personality traits
are consistent with recent research by Gilovich, Savitsky, and Medvec (1998)
examining the illusion of transparency in the context of deception. In one of their
studies, participants were instructed to be deceptive when answering questions
(e.g., ‘‘What brand of shampoo do you typically use?’’) in front of a group of
fellow participants. Liars’ estimates of how many of their fellow participants
would detect that they were lying dramatically exceeded the actual rate of
detection, and private self-consciousness was associated with greater feelings of
transparency. A recent investigation by Lederman, Savitsky, and Gilovich (1998)
is also relevant. Results demonstrated transparency overestimation by participants
trying to communicate emotions such as regret, jealousy, and love. Moreover,
transparency overestimation was related to the intensity with which individuals
reported experiencing the emotion that they were trying to portray. This correla-
tional finding is consistent with the idea that transparency overestimation stems
from individuals’ difficulty in setting aside private self-knowledge to imagine an
outside observer’s perspective on their behavior.
The present research indicates that both public and private self-awareness are
connected to enhanced perceived transparency of personality traits. In our view,
these parallel effects for private and public self-awareness can be understood in
terms of their parallel connections to self-knowledge accessibility. The pattern for
private self-awareness is perhaps the most straightforward, given that this form of
jesp. 1388
self-awareness is essentially defined as the salience of self-relevant information.

Nonetheless, we believe that the present theoretical framework readily extends to
public self-awareness and that the effects that we have obtained in this regard are
highly consistent with the existing literature. As mentioned earlier, a concern with
how one is viewed by others seems apt to be associated with the recruitment of
self-relevant information that might provide insight in this regard, and research
confirms that public self-awareness is indeed connected to self-knowledge acces-
sibility. Other research has demonstrated that people high in public self-awareness
are apt to take another individual’s behavior personally, as a reaction to them-
selves, and has relied on the relative accessibility of self-referent cognitions to
understand these effects (Fenigstein, 1979, 1984). The present findings extend this
literature by indicating that a concern with how one is viewed by others heightens
one’s readiness to see one’s own as well as others’ actions as reflective of one’s
self.
We have characterized the process underlying transparency overestimation as
one in which self-aware individuals interpret their actions and remarks in light of
salient self-knowledge and then assume that another person will share their
interpretations. An alternative possibility is that people simply assume that their
self is obvious—without referring to their behavior at all (Kenny & DePaulo,
1993). Although we believe that self-aware individuals considering how they are
viewed by someone else typically make at least some—albeit quite biased—
reference to their actions and remarks, we cannot address this issue with our
present data. Indeed, we cannot make any definitive statements about the process
underlying the link between self-awareness and feelings of transparency on the
basis the present research, which focused instead on demonstrating the phenom-
enon. However, in recent research on transparency overestimation with respect to
goals in negotiation, the effect of self-knowledge salience on feelings of transpar-
ency was moderated by the type of communication that was permitted (Vorauer &
Claude, 1998). This finding suggests that individuals for whom self-relevant
information is highly accessible do make some reference to their actions and
remarks when estimating an observer’s impressions.
Transparency Overestimation in the Context of Social Interaction

The present experimental paradigms were highly controlled. Participants had
no access to social feedback when forming their metaperceptions. Furthermore,
we prevented self-awareness from affecting behavior by constraining the variabil-
ity of individuals’ responses to the problems (Studies 1 and 2) and/or by
administering the experimental manipulation after the behavior had been per-
formed (Studies 2 and 3). These procedures were essential to our primary goal of
examining the impact of self-awareness on cognitive processes. However, the
procedures raise questions regarding a second important issue, the ubiquity of
transparency overestimation in the context of social interaction.
First consider the availability of social feedback. Kenny and DePaulo (1993)
outlined a number of different processes by which individuals might try to
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determine another person’s impressions of them. They speculated that people may
be most likely to engage in perspective-taking in the presence of clear contextual
cues that suggest that another person might view them differently than they view
themselves. This points to the possibility that direct feedback from an audience
will serve to correct individuals’ inaccurate inferences about the transparency of
their personal qualities.
Although clear, explicit feedback should correct individuals’ inaccurate judg-
ments about the messages they have conveyed with their behavior, such direct
appraisals are probably rare. Conceivably, the typically ambiguous nature of other
people’s reactions often serves instead to exacerbate biases in self-inference.
Individuals may interpret another person’s behavior toward them as reflecting
reactions and evaluations that are consistent with their self-views (see Shrauger &
Schoeneman, 1979). Thus, self-aware individuals may assimilate an interaction
partner’s behavior as well as their own behavior to their self-concept.
The constraints on behavior imposed by our experimental paradigm may have
been more important to transparency overestimation. Research indicates that
self-awareness is likely to affect people’s actions and remarks. When privately
self-focused, individuals are more apt to behave in ways that are consistent with
their attitudes and self-concepts (see Scheier & Carver, 1983). Furthermore, being
the target of evaluation may sometimes prompt people to endeavor to communi-
cate particular aspects of themselves to another person. When self-awareness
and/or evaluative circumstances affect behavior, enhanced feelings of transpar-
ency might reflect reality: Individuals may, in fact, be more transparent to others.
We suspect that people’s sense of transparency will often outpace their actual
transparency in such situations, however. Indeed, recent research in the context of
negotiation suggests that increasing the salience of actors’ goals prior to their
communication efforts increases their feelings of transparency but not their actual
transparency to observers (Vorauer & Claude, 1998).
An additional aspect of the present experimental paradigms merits discussion.
Across each of the three studies, participants were asked to estimate a complete
stranger’s ability to discern their traits and feelings from their behavior. There is
good reason to suspect transparency overestimation to be even greater in the
context of ongoing relationships than in interactions between strangers. When
individuals feel an emotional bond with another person, cognitive merging of self
and other (Aron, Aron, Tudor, & Nelson, 1991) may detract from their sense that
the other person’s perspective is distinct from their own. Recent research by
Swann and Gill (1997) demonstrating little connection between impression
accuracy and relationship length or intimacy suggests that such bond-driven
increases in felt transparency are apt to represent increases in transparency
overestimation. Individuals’ motivations to be understood and to be viewed
positively by a close other (Murray, Holmes, & Griffin, 1996; Reis & Shaver,
1988; Swann, De La Ronde, & Hixon, 1994) might also enhance transparency
overestimation in ongoing relationships. Importantly, however, we would still
expect to find a link between self-awareness and transparency overestimation in
jesp. 1388
interactions between friends or romantic partners. In cases such as these where

individuals are familiar and comfortable with one another, negative or positive
affective states might be a common source of self-awareness (Salovey, 1992;
Wood et al., 1990) and, hence, of transparency overestimation. Note that the
connection between self-awareness and feelings of transparency would seem to
have particularly interesting implications for potential romantic partners in the
earliest stages of relationship formation. Concerns with evaluation might lead
individuals to exaggerate how readily apparent their interest is to the other person.
Feeling Misperceived
In numerous everyday contexts typically characterized by self-awareness,
people sometimes seem to feel misperceived rather than transparent. For example,
after giving a presentation or having an interview, individuals may agonize over
not having communicated their true level of competence to their audience. They
may be likely to think that they appeared unintelligent or unfriendly, traits that do
not reflect what they are really like. How can such experiences be explained from
the present perspective?
Private self-knowledge may affect individuals’ perceptions of the impressions
they have conveyed differently, depending on the magnitude of the discrepancy
between the behavior in question and currently accessible self-relevant informa-
tion. In the present research, participants were allowed to spend as much time as
they liked deciding on their responses to the problem situations, which were
designed so that the decisions would be subjectively easy. The potential for
exhibiting behaviors that were extremely misleading about their personal charac-
teristics was presumably rather minimal. Thus, the findings likely reflect the
influence of individuals’ salient self-knowledge on their perception of behaviors
that were largely nondiagnostic or only slightly inconsistent with their self-views.
When behavior instead deviates in a marked and unambiguous fashion from
individuals’ beliefs about their personal qualities, individuals may contrast rather
than assimilate the behavior to the information they possess about themselves (see
Manis, Nelson, & Shedler, 1988). In addition, extremely incongruent cues may
draw attention by virtue of their lack of fit with an operative schema (Johnson &
Judd, 1983).
Perceived discrepancies would seem most likely when there is time pressure or
when the task is very difficult or novel. In such circumstances, people may be
more critical of their behavior as a result of contrasting it with the personal
standards and expectations they had for their performance. They might reflect
back on the way they presented themselves, thinking about what they could have
said or what they forgot to say. Individuals’ knowledge of their plans and
intentions, coupled with counterfactual thinking (Miller, McFarland, & Turnbull,
1990), may lead them to evaluate their behavior especially unfavorably. Other
circumstances may prompt an alternative process whereby low expectations
produce particularly favorable evaluations. In any event, the critical point for the
present analysis is that when people are self-aware they may fail to take into
jesp. 1388
account that the private knowledge and standards they use to judge their actions
are not available to their audience. They may inaccurately assume that the
audience will share their own evaluation of their behavior. Thus, although
self-awareness may not always elicit heightened feelings of transparency, it may
more generally lead individuals to overutilize privately available self-relevant
information when deducing the impressions they have conveyed to someone else.
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Self Awareness

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Self Awareness

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Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 35, 415–440 (1999)

Article ID jesp.1999.1388, available online at http://www.idealibrary.com on

Self-Awareness and Feeling Transparent:

University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Three studies examined the relationship between self-awareness and perceptions of

—C. S. Lewis, 1955

Individuals possess a wealth of self-knowledge based on their past behaviors

awareness impedes perspective-taking. Thus a second route by which self-

Public versus Private Self-Awareness

tional public and private self-consciousness to feelings of transparency. In Study

best. Three of the possible solutions were designed to be obviously unreasonable.

Feelings of transparency were assessed with a checklist task. Participants

Mean Standard deviation

Note. N ⫽ 50 for all variables.

ible. Participants’ scores on the three self-consciousness variables (i.e., private,

b ␤ t(45) b ␤ t(45) t(45) b ␤ t(45)

Note. The t value is not presented if p ⬎ .10.

dimensions centering on the salience of self-relevant information enhanced the

Procedure. All actors responded to the three personal-relationships problems

variance were computed according to the formulas provided by Howell (1987).

ency. Analyses of perceived transparency that included trait observability as a

7Significance-testing of average within-cell correlations was conducted according to Rosenthal’s

(1991) method of combining Z’s.

transparency should follow self-knowledge salience. Thus, we expected that

version of an expected-scrutiny account in which individuals’ own ideas about the

self-awareness is essentially defined as the salience of self-relevant information.

Transparency Overestimation in the Context of Social Interaction

interactions between friends or romantic partners. In cases such as these where

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