The second set of measures assesses emotional reactions that arise when people become concerned with how
others are perceiving and evaluating them. A number of good measures of social anxiety have been developed
(see Leary, 1991 , for a review), but we review only the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale ( Mattick & Clarke, 1998 )
because it is one of the most recent additions to the body of such measures. Researchers interested in measuring
individual differences in social anxiety should consider the merits of the various scales that exist. Despite its
name, the Social Phobia Scale ( Mattick & Clarke, 1998 ) does not measure social phobia per se but rather individ-
ual differences in the degree to which people become anxious when they believe that others are observing
or scrutinizing them. We prefer the term ‘scrutiny fear’ for this construct. The Social Physique Anxiety Scale
(Hart et al., 1989 ) assesses individual differences in the degree to which people experience social anxiety when
they believe that others are evaluating their body or physique. The fourth scale in this section is the
Susceptibility to Embarrassment Scale ( Kelly & Jones, 1997 ), the first new measure of embarrassability to appear
since Modigliani’s (1966) classic scale.
Finally, we review two measures that assess the kinds of impressions that people prefer to make on others and
the tactics that they use to do so. The Self-Presentation Tactics Scale ( Lee et al., 1999 ) contains subscales that
assess the use of 12 self-presentation tactics, including excuses, justifications, disclaimers, self-handicapping,
apologies, intimidation, supplication, entitlement, enhancement, blasting, and exemplification. In contrast, the
Impression Management Styles Scale ( Bolino & Turnley, 1999 ) measures the degree to which people use each of
the five self-presentational styles identified by Jones and Pittman (1982) /C0to appear competent (self-promotion),
friendly and likeable (ingratiation), morally exemplary (exemplification), threatening (intimidation), and helpless
and weak (supplication).
As should be clear, each of the nine measures reviewed here assesses a fundamentally different construct.
Each of the constructs involves people’s concerns with their social image and others’ evaluations of them, but the
measures tap into different aspects of these concerns.
Public Self-Consciousness Scale (PuSC)
(Scheier & Carver, 1985 ).
Variable
Public self-consciousness refers to the degree to which people are aware of themselves as social objects, are
attuned to the impressions they make on others, and think about how other people might be perceiving or evalu-
ating them.
Sample
The revised PuSC Scale was developed using a sample of 298 university students ( Scheier & Carver, 1985 ).
Description
The original PuSC was developed empirically during construction of the Self-consciousness Scale, a 23-item
measure that includes subscales for public self-consciousness, private self-consciousness, and social anxiety
(Fenigstein et al., 1975 ). The seven items on the PuSC Scale assess the extent to which people focus on themselves
as social objects and are aware of or concerned about how they are viewed by others. Public self-consciousness
consistently emerges as one of three factors in factor analyses of the Self-consciousness Scale.
Although the original PuSC Scale has good psychometric properties and has been used extensively, certain scale
items may be difficult for nonstudent respondents to understand. As a result, Scheier and Carver (1985) reworded
problematic items without changing their content. Scores on the revised PuSC Scale correlated 0.84 with the original
scale. Furthermore, each of the revised items loaded onto the appropriate factors, with similar magnitudes, as the
original items. On the revised PuSC Scale, which uses a 4-point response format, the mean scores for a sample of
213 male and 85 female undergraduate students were 13.5 and 14.2, respectively, with no significant difference
between men and women. The mean score was 11.8 for a sample of 396 female adults (aged 45 /C050 years).
Reliability
Internal Consistency
Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the revised PuSC Scale was found to be 0.84, which was slightly higher than that
for the original scale ( Scheier & Carver, 1985 ).White and Peloza (2009) also reported a similar alpha coefficient450 16. MEASURES OF CONCERNS WITH PUBLIC IMAGE AND SOCIAL EVALUATION
IV. INTERPERSONAL STYLES