Imaginary Audience Behavior as a Function of Age, Sex and Formal Operational Thinking

The Situation Scale for Adolescents (SISA), a Dutch extended version of the Imaginary Audience Scale, was administered to several hundreds of youngsters at the 7th, 9th and 12th grade levels. The scale, assessing self-consciousness in two types of social situations, proved to be reliable, but yielded confused results regarding age and sex differences. In addition, concern about the imaginary audience was not associated with formal operational thought. These results are in line with previous studies on these topics. When taken together, they clearly indicate that Elkind's theory on the imaginary audience is in need of revision. Findings on the cognitive origin of the imaginary audience are discussed in the light of recent research on formal operations, and suggestions are made for future research.