Public self-consciousness and self-esteem after self-presentation

In this article I am verifying the hypothesis that a high level of public self-consciousness influences the degree in which a person adjusts self-knowledge to self-presentation. According to the theory of self-consciousness (Carver & Scheier, 1981), people are characterized by a certain level of self-consciousness: public and private. In a particular moment person focuses attention on experiences and emotions (private self-consciousness) or on the opinions of others (public self-consciousness). Based on previous research results, I’ve assumed that a high level of public self-consciousness favors adaptive changes in the self-knowledge. In this study I also manipulated the degree of involvement in self-presentation. In first condition respondents were asked do present themselves as an „independent in thinking person”. In the second condition participants only expected for presentation. The level of chronic self-consciousness was also measured. The results showed that the strongest adaptive change in self-knowledge occurred in the group where participants really actually presented themselves as „independent in thinking” and they had high level of public self-consciousness. After this part of procedure, they describe themselves as more „independent in thinking” than in other conditions. The obtained results allow to state that the level of chronic public self-consciousness plays a significant role in the internalization of the presented behaviors and opens the field for further research in this direction. peerReviewed publishedVersion