History of Exposure to Self-Focusing Stimuli As a Developmental Antecedent of Self-Consciousness

Szmimary.—The present report investigated the question of how individual differences in self-consciousness devdop. Rimé and LeBon proposed that high self-consciousness follows a history of frequent exposure to selffocusing stimuli, i.e., mirrors, audiences, audio and video devices, and cameras. To explore this hypothesis private and public self-consciousness and past exposure to self-focusing stimuli were assessed in 438 subjects. Analysis indicated that history of frequent exposure to self-focusing stimuli is significantly but weakly related to high private self-consciousness in men and to high public self-consciousness in women. This supports previous observations suggesting that the routes to the development of selfconsciousness seem to differ for the two sexes