Objective self-awareness and stigma: implications for persons with visible disabilities

Journal of Rehabilitation, April-June, 2004 by Andrew A. Phemister, Nancy M. Crewe

Does self-consciousness affect how a person thinks or behaves in different situations? Social scientists and psychologists have studied this question for over a century and many have said, "yes, it does" (Cooley, 1902; James, 1890; Mead, 1934). For instance, giving a presentation, interviewing for a job, and inviting someone on a date are all common situations that will likely cause a person to feel more self-aware and sometimes self-critical (cf. Silvia & Duval, 2001; Duval & Wicklund, 1972). After such an event, the person may feel quite negatively about his or her appearance and performance. "I was terrible!" "Now they will never hire me!" "I looked foolish!"

It has been exhaustively discussed among scholars that inherent to such self-conscious events lies a "fulcrum" of awareness that balances a person directly between the anxiety-provoking experience of self as both object and subject. Rollo May (1967) fittingly referred to this experience as the "human dilemma", and asserted that such dual-awareness [of self as object and subject] is a necessary element to gratification in life. Perception of approval from others can lead to increased confidence and self-esteem, while perception of disdain or negative evaluation can produce the opposite results. People in general receive varying degrees of positive and negative appraisal, but does this dilemma of self-awareness impact a person differently when others can see that the person has a disability? From past experiences many people can probably relate to the above self-critical statements (e.g., "I looked foolish!"). However, on closer inspection such statements imply a deeper issue regarding the proposed dilemma of self-awareness, especially when visible disability is a factor. It is well observed that persons with disabilities experience social stigma much more than the general population, and the enduring presence of stigma in our society suggests that the answer to the above question might also be "yes,"--that because of stigma, it is conceivable that the acute experience of self-awareness may affect persons with visible disabilities differently than able-bodied persons. Stigma affects people who are in some way different from majority expectations (Coleman, 1997) and, in fact, even perceived stigma was found to be an independent predictor of depression in persons with leg amputations (Rybarczyk, Nyenhuis, Nicholas, Cash, & Kaiser, 1995).

Stigma has been around for a long time and social scientists have been studying it closely for perhaps just as long (e.g., Allport, 1954, Cooley, 1902; Fine & Asch, 1995; Heatherton, Kleck, Hebl, & Hull, 2000). In the early 1960s Erving Goffman posed the question, "how does the stigmatized individual respond to his (sic) situation?" (1963, p.9). In response to his own question, Goffman asserted that for some stigmatized individuals "it will be possible for him to make a direct attempt to correct what he sees as the objective basis of his failing", for instance plastic surgery for certain deformities (emphasis added, see below).

In keeping with these observations, this paper is concerned with the large number of persons with disabilities who may always be at risk of experiencing social stigma. The goal of this paper is to employ a critical theory of self-awareness that offers much to the phenomenology of disability in a conceptual examination of the impact of stigma on persons with visible disabilities. Below is an introduction to the theory of objective self-awareness (OSA; Duval & Wicklund, 1972) and some recent developments. This is followed by a discussion of research on stigma, and the integration and implications of both OSA and stigma to disability studies and individual adjustment to disability.

Objective Self-Awareness and Visible Disability

In its original form, the theory of objective self-awareness was a comprehensive theory intended to explain why individuals conform their behaviors, appearance, and beliefs to those of others (Duval & Wicklund, 1972). Duval and Wicklund formulated their theory on the basis of a distinction between two forms of conscious attention. They postulated that individuals have one innate consciousness with directional properties; attention can be dually focused either outward toward the environment or inward toward oneself. However, it was emphasized that attention cannot be simultaneously focused outward and inward; that a person can only attend to one thing at a time. For instance, a person is unable to focus attention on a personal characteristic while driving a nail into wood. Duval and Wicklund identified outward attention as the state of subjective self-awareness, and defined it as attention that is focused upon environmental characteristics. In subjective self-awareness the person is the "subject" who is observing and perceiving the various aspects of their environment. However, given this, it may seem more accurate to say that a subjectively self-aware individual is actually environment-aware rather than self-aware, and, as Duval and Wicklund explained, this is indeed accurate--at least in the "usual sense of the term" (refer to p. 2). But, the person is self-aware in that he or she receives and perceives feedback from the environment regarding his or her behaviors, attitudes, etc. Subjective self-awareness arises directly from the experience of oneself as the source of perception and action.