When the Self Stands Out: Figure?-?Ground Effects on Self-Focused Attention

Self-Focus 1 Running Head: SELF-FOCUSED ATTENTION When the Self Stands Out: Figure–Ground Effects on Self-Focused Attention

When the Self Stands Out: Figure–Ground Effects on Self-Focused Attention

When do people focus attention on the self? Based on Gestalt notions of figure–ground assignment, two experiments demonstrated that making self figural against a background induces self-focused attention. In Experiment 1, perceiving figural self-symbols increased selfawareness relative to perceiving background selfsymbols. In Experiment 2, making self figural against the background of a 6-perso...

Self-awareness and self-confrontation: effects of self-focused attention on members of a clinical population.

Research in the area of self-awareness theory has indicated that self-focused attention consistently produces both an increase in perceived intensity of affect and enhanced accuracy of self-reports. The present studies consider these effects in relation to the technique of self-confrontation as used in psychotherapy. In the first study, members of two different clinical populations (alcoholics ...

On Introspection and Self-Perception : Does Self-Focused Attention Enable Accurate Self-Knowledge?

How is introspection related to accurate self-perception? Self-focused attention is said to facilitate accurate judgments of cognitive aspects (attitudes, standards, and attributions) and somatic aspects (sensations, arousal, physical symptoms, emotions) of self. The present skeptical review concludes that the "perceptual accuracy hypothesis" is unsupported. There is simply little direct eviden...

Running head: SELF-FOCUSED ATTENTION AND EVALUATION

This study investigated the effects of self-focused attention and evaluation on the perceived performance of individuals high in social anxiety. High and low socially anxious participants (n = 92) were asked to give four short speeches under different conditions of increased self-focused attention (in front of a mirror) or decreased self-focused attention (in front of a poster), and/or under co...