Opinion change and performance facilitation as a result of objective self-awareness

Abstract

Three experiments were designed to demonstrate that objective self-awareness, a state in which the individual evaluates himself and attempts to attain correctness and consistency in his beliefs and behaviors, can mediate both opinion change and performance facilitation. In Experiment I, objective self-awareness was increased for some Ss when they heard their own tape-recorded voices, and relative to an appropriate control condition, those Ss showed increased agreement with the modal opinion of a positive reference group. In Experiment II, the subjects engaged in counterattitudinal essay-writing, and some of them were exposed to an operating television camera while they wrote. It was found that opinion change in the direction of the counterattitudinal essays was greater among subjects who were exposed to the camera than among those who were not. Experiment III was an attempt to demonstrate that performance facilitation effects can be produced through self-evaluation. Approximately half of the Ss performed a routine task while facing a mirror, while the remaining Ss performed the same task with no mirror. It was argued theoretically that the mirror would effect self-evaluation with respect to performance rate, and consistent with this expectation, performance was better in the presence of a mirror.