What is objective self-awareness?
How a mirror, a camera or a recorded voice turns attention inward, what a Halloween field study and an anagram experiment found, and why a standard has to be present.
Answer to the question
What is objective self-awareness?
Objective self-awareness is the state in which attention turns to the self as an object, often through a mirror, a camera or one's own recorded voice. Duval and Wicklund proposed in 1972 that people then compare their behaviour with their own standards. Field and laboratory studies found less rule-breaking in some mirror conditions.
Key takeaways
- Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund proposed in 1972 that when attention turns to the self, people compare their behaviour with their own standards.
- In a field study of 363 Halloween trick-or-treaters, a mirror behind the candy bowl reduced rule-breaking only among children who had first been asked for their name and address (Beaman, Klentz, Diener and Svanum, 1979).
- In a second study with 349 children, self-aware children took less candy than other children when no rule had been stated.
- In a 1976 anagram experiment, participants facing a mirror and hearing their own recorded voice showed less rule-breaking than participants beside it hearing another voice (Diener and Wallbom).
- A 2020 study with participants in Japan found that a mirror did not change coin-taking while an own-voice recording did (Narita and Ishii).
At a doorway on Halloween, a bowl of sweets sat beside a request to take only one, and in some houses a mirror stood behind the bowl. The mirror cut rule-breaking, but only among children who had first been asked for their name and address.
What objective self-awareness does to a person, step by step
Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund set out the idea in A Theory of Objective Self-Awareness. Attention normally points outward, at the task and the people around us. Some cues swing it inward, so that the person becomes an object of their own attention, and in that state they set what they are doing beside what they think is right. Adam Alter gathers the mirror findings in Drunk Tank Pink as one of several ways a setting can shift behaviour without a rule or a penalty. The theory's sequence runs like this:
- A cue turns attention to the self, such as a mirror, a camera or the sound of one's own recorded voice.
- The person's own standards for the situation come into view.
- Current behaviour is compared with those standards.
- The gap tends to close, because behaviour moves toward the standard.
Experiments observe the first step and the last. The two in the middle are the theory's account of what happens between them, and they explain why the same mirror can matter in one room and not in another.
Objective self-awareness is also brief. It lasts while the cue is present and attention stays turned inward, and it fades when attention moves back to the task or the crowd. That is why researchers speak of a state and not a trait, and why a setting can switch it on for a few minutes without changing anything lasting about the person.
The standards in question are the person's own. A mirror adds no rule and no penalty, which is why it counts as a gentle intervention. It makes the standard the person already holds harder to ignore. A purchase can be read the same way, by its buyer, as evidence of the kind of person they are, the self-referenced logic in Do Purchases Work as Self-Signalling.
What the anagram room and the Halloween doorstep showed
In 1976 Edward Diener and Mark Wallbom gave students an anagram task with a chance for rule-breaking. Participants who sat in front of a mirror and heard their own recorded voice showed less rule-breaking than participants who sat beside the mirror and heard someone else's voice. Two self-focus cues were stacked against a condition with none, which makes it a clean test of the idea and a poor guide to how strong a single mirror is.
The Halloween study added conditions that a laboratory cannot easily copy. The age of the child mattered, and the first child to reach the bowl in each group set an informal norm that interacted with the stated rule. In the field study by Arthur Beaman, Bonnel Klentz, Edward Diener and Soren Svanum, 363 trick-or-treaters took part, and in a second study with 349 children, the pattern repeated: with no stated rule, self-aware children took less candy than children who were not self-aware. Standards, it seems, can come from a rule on the doorstep or from the child's own sense of what is fair, and the mirror works on either.
Both studies asked about small rule-breaking, so the findings on objective self-awareness describe modest everyday choices.
Our view, an interpretation of two studies and not a measured law, is that the cue and the standard travel together. A mirror helps most where a person already holds a clear idea of what is right and is not anonymous, and it does least in a room where no standard is in play, which fits the way the children who gave their names behaved.
Where self-focus cues appear and where they fade
Cues that produce objective self-awareness are common outside laboratories. A self-view window on a video call, a mirrored panel at a shop entrance, a camera dome above a till and a recording of one's own voice all turn attention toward the person. The experiments used mirrors and recordings and did not test these settings, so they are places to look for the mechanism and not results.
Being seen by others is a separate route. A picture of a pair of eyes, if it works, works by suggesting an audience, and how well that route has held up is the question in Do Watching Eyes Make People Behave. A real audience is the stronger version, the case in Does Public Shaming Change Behaviour. Objective self-awareness needs neither audience: the only observer is the person in the mirror.
For anyone designing a space or a form, the useful question is which cue fits the standard already in play. A reminder that a person wrote down their own intention, a preview of their own work or a visible record of their earlier choices all point attention at the self in the same way a mirror does, though each needs its own test. Objective self-awareness gives the design question a name, and the studies give it a starting point, not a guarantee.
The effect also varies by setting and task. In a 2020 study, Asuka Narita and Keiko Ishii tested participants in Japan and found that a mirror did not change how many coins people took, while hearing their own recorded voice led to fewer additional coins than in a control condition. The cue that works can differ with the people and the task, which is a reason to treat any single mirror result as one data point.
Common questions
What is objective self-awareness?
Objective self-awareness is the state in which attention turns to the self as an object, usually through a cue such as a mirror, a camera or one's own recorded voice, so that a person compares their behaviour with their own standards. Duval and Wicklund proposed it in 1972.
Does a mirror make people more honest?
In the studies reviewed here it lowered rule-breaking in some conditions. On Halloween it did so for children who had given their names and addresses, and in a 1976 anagram task it accompanied less rule-breaking when stacked with a recording of the participant's own voice.
Is a watching-eyes picture the same thing?
No. A picture of eyes suggests an audience, which is a different route from the self-focus a mirror produces.
Does the effect hold in every setting?
No. A 2020 study with participants in Japan found no change in coin-taking with a mirror, though a recording of the participant's own voice did change it.
Sources
Alter, A. Drunk Tank Pink. Seed book; vault hub Books/Drunk Tank Pink.
Duval, S., & Wicklund, R. A. (1972). A Theory of Objective Self-Awareness. Academic Press.
Beaman, A. L., Klentz, B., Diener, E., & Svanum, S. (1979). Self-awareness and transgression in children: Two field studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(10), 1835-1846. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.37.10.1835 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.10.1835
Diener, E., & Wallbom, M. (1976). Effects of self-awareness on antinormative behavior. Journal of Research in Personality, 10(1), 107-111. doi:10.1016/0092-6566(76)90088-X https://doi.org/10.1016/0092-6566(76)90088-X
Narita, A., & Ishii, K. (2020). My voice capturing my attention to myself: The effects of objective self-awareness on Japanese people. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1596. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01596 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01596