Using the Imaginary Audience Scale as a Measure of Social Anxiety in Young Adults

Abstract

Two studies explored the utility and meaning of the imaginary audience phenomenon among college students. Study 1 examined the psychometric properties of the Imaginary Audience Scale used for college student samples. The second study correlated imaginary audience scores with a global measure of personality and also compared the accuracy of selfmeasures, social anxiety measures, and a measure of formal reasoning to predict imaginary audience scores. Results indicated that Imaginary Audience Scale scores met conventional standards of validity and reliability in these samples of postadolescent individuals. As expected, imaginary audience behavior was related to measures of social anxiety, the self, and personality. Furthermore, imaginary audience scores were more strongly related to these measures than to an index of formal reasoning. These results suggest that imaginary audience experiences that persist into late adolescence and early adulthood may have more to do with social anxiety than with cognitive development.