THE EFFECT OF CLIENT OBJECTIVE SELF-AWARENESS ON CLIENT SELF-PERCEPTION AND BEHAVIOR CHANGE IN A COUNSELING ANALOGUE

Recently, several counseling theorists have used social psychological theories to explain change processes in counseling. One such theory, alluded to by several writers but largely untested, is objective self-awareness theory. This theory states that self-awareness is a bipolar attentional variable, such that a person can be attending to the self or to the world. When attending to the self, a person is likely to experience a decrement in self-esteem and will be motivated to behave in conformity with internal values or salient societal norms. While objective self-awareness is hypothesized to be part of the dynamic for change within counseling, no research has been done to verify this hypothesis. This study attempted to demonstrate the presence of increased objective self-awareness in a counseling analogue and to assess the behavioral and attitudinal consequences of client objective self-awareness. Scripts were developed to differentially enhance self-awareness in two experimental groups counseled about their problems with procrastination. A control group simply filled out the dependent measures without seeing a counselor. Stimulation of objective self-awareness was mildly successful, but level of self-awareness was not significantly different between groups. Multiple interactions between trait and state objective self-awareness and between group and time dimensions were noted. These interactions tended to cancel any group effects. The only significant difference found in self-awareness occurred in the control group, whose members high in trait self-awareness also chose significantly more first-person pronouns on the state self-awareness measure. Behavior and satisfaction with behavior improved in all groups, but improved the most in the Non-Self-Aware group--the experimental group which was supposedly the least self-aware. These results were explained by demand characteristics of the counseling situation and within an impression management framework of counselor/client interaction. No differences in internality of attributed causation were found