(α50.81), and a study that administered an Arabic translation of the revised PuSC Scale reported Cronbach’s alpha
coefficients of 0.75 with high-school students and 0.81 with university students ( Alanazi, 2001 ). Studies that have
used the original PuSC Scale typically demonstrate alpha coefficients exceeding 0.70 ( Crawford & Novak, 2013;
Ghorbani, Watson, & Weathington, 2009; McKenzie & Hoyle, 2008 ) if not 0.80 ( Crawford & Novak, 2013; LaBrie,
Pedersen, Neighbors, & Hummer, 2008; Lalwani, Shrum, & Chiu, 2009; Park, Sher, & Krull, 2006; Workman & Lee,
2011; Xu, 2008 ), although Sharp, Voci, and Hewstone (2011) reported an alpha coefficient of 0.67.
Test/C0Retest
For the revised scale, the 4-week test-retest correlation was found to be 0.74 ( Scheier & Carver, 1985 ).
Validity
Convergent/Concurrent
The original PuSC Scale correlated with variables that reflect an awareness of oneself as a social object and
concerns with others’ impressions, including social anxiety ( r50.34), fear of negative evaluation ( rs50.65, 0.63),
social identity ( rs50.46, 0.54), and shyness ( r50.30) ( Schlenker & Weigold, 1990 ). The scale also correlated with
scores on the Self-Monitoring Scale ( r50.19 to 0.30), which reflects the degree to which people manage their
impressions to meet the demands of the current social situation ( Briggs, Cheek, & Buss, 1980 ). The original PuSC
Scale correlated only moderately with sociability ( r50.22; Carver & Glass, 1976 ).
Divergent/Discriminant
The original PuSC Scale did not correlate with measures of intelligence ( r520.11), need for achievement
(r50.09), test anxiety ( r520.01), or impulsivity ( r520.12). Additionally, the PuSC Scale did not correlate with
openness ( r50.02), extraversion ( r520.02), neuroticism ( r50.02), affinity-seeking ( r50.09), or self-esteem
(r520.08), and correlated only weakly with conscientiousness ( r50.16) and agreeableness ( r50.18) ( Lee,
Moore, Park, & Park, 2012 ). Several studies show that the PuSC Scale does not correlate with measures of social
desirability (e.g., Hofmann, Gschwendner, & Schmitt, 2005 ), although it did correlate weakly ( r520.23) with
scores on a short form of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale ( Heintz & Steele-Johnson, 2004 ).
Construct/Factor Analytic
Public self-consciousness consistently emerges as one of three factors in factor analyses of the Self-consciousness
Scale, whether the original or revised scale items are used ( Bernstein, Teng, & Garbin, 1986; Burnkrant & Page, 1984;
Chang, 1998; Cramer, 2000; Fenigstein et al., 1975; Nystedt & Smari, 1989; Scheier & Carver, 1985 ). However, ques-
tions have been raised about whether the public self-consciousness items themselves might be multidimensional.
For example, Mittal and Balasubramanian (1987) suggested that the Public Self-consciousness Scale is composed of
two factors /C0style consciousness (concern about one’s personal behavioral style and self-presentation) and appear-
ance consciousness (concern about one’s physical appearance and attractiveness).
Although some evidence supports a two-factor structure for the original PuSC Scale ( Nystedt & Ljungberg,
2002; Watson, Morris, Ramsey, Hickman, & Waddell, 1996 ), the two factors relate similarly to other measures
(Watson et al., 1996 ), and separate research supports a unidimensional structure for both the original PuSC
Scale ( Bernstein et al., 1986; Burnkrant & Page, 1984; Cramer, 2000; Piliavin & Charng, 1988 ) and the revised
scale ( Alanazi, 2001; Chang, 1998; Martin & Debus, 1999 ). Evidently, the bulk of the evidence supports a one-
factor structure.
Criterion/Predictive
Two studies demonstrated that people who score high in public self-consciousness think about themselves
from the perspectives of other people more than those who are low in public self-consciousness, as the conceptu-
alization of the construct suggests. When asked to draw an ‘E’ on their forehead, high publicly self-conscious par-
ticipants were significantly more likely than lows to draw the ‘E’ from an external perspective /C0that is, so that it
appeared normal to an observer /C0consistent with the idea that they view themselves as a social object from the
perspective of others ( Hass, 1984 ). Furthermore, participants who were high in public self-consciousness demon-
strated a stronger ‘self-as-target’ bias by overestimating the likelihood that they would be chosen to participate
in a demonstration in front of their peers, compared to participants low in public self-consciousness
(Fenigstein, 1984 ). Thinking about oneself from the perspectives of other people is associated with a greater sense
that one is the target of others’ actions.451 OVERVIEW OF THE MEASURES
IV. INTERPERSONAL STYLES