Self-report measure

Private Self-Consciousness

Private Self-Consciousness uses 10 International Personality Item Pool statements to assess Private Self-Consciousness.

You learn how much attention you turn toward your inner life.

For anyone who spends a lot of time reflecting on their own thoughts and feelings.

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The full results and PDF are included at no cost.

Your answers stay private.

It comes from social psychology research on inward self-focus.

Sample result, example data. Illustrative chart with invented scores; it does not describe any real respondent.

What this test is

Welcome. Private Self-Consciousness uses 10 International Personality Item Pool statements to assess Private Self-Consciousness.

The measure

It has 10 items, each answered on a 5-point (Very Inaccurate … Very Accurate) scale.

International Personality Item Pool (ipip.ori.org).

At a glance

Items

Response scale

5-point (Very Inaccurate … Very Accurate)

Est. time

~1 min

Access

Free · full results and PDF

What it measures

Ten statements describe attention turned inward: reflecting about oneself a lot, trying to figure oneself out, being aware of changes in one's mood, examining one's motives, and noticing one's inner feelings. The scale concerns the habit of self-reflection, not concern about how others see one.

Fenigstein, Scheier and Buss (1975) distinguished private self-consciousness, attention to inner aspects of the self, from public self-consciousness, awareness of oneself as seen by others. The distinction has been influential in research on self-knowledge and emotion. The statements here come from the public-domain International Personality Item Pool (IPIP).

The ratings are combined into a single score. Higher scores describe a stronger habit of self-reflection; lower scores describe less attention to inner states. Self-reflection can support self-knowledge, though when it becomes repetitive and negative it can resemble rumination.

The scale is used in research on self-awareness and emotion. On this site, the Public Self-Consciousness scale describes awareness of oneself as seen by others, the Emotional Intelligence Scales include Attention to Emotions, and the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) describes repetitive worry.

Validity evidence

Private self-consciousness — attention to internal thoughts, feelings, and motivations — shows convergent validity with introspection, emotional awareness, and private emotion reports (Fenigstein et al., 1975).

Example item

“Am constantly reflecting about myself.”

Very InaccurateModerately InaccurateNeither Accurate nor InaccurateModerately AccurateVery Accurate

Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.

Scoring & interpretation

Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a percent of the maximum possible score. No normative percentile is applied — there is no verbatim-matched published norm for this exact item set.

References

Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M. F., & Buss, A. H. (1975). Public and private self-consciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43(4), 522-527.
Goldberg, L. R. (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public domain, personality inventory. Personality Psychology in Europe, 7, 7-28.

Sample report preview

The report shows your total score and where it falls across the range of possible scores, followed by a plain-language explanation of what scores in that region describe. Where the instrument has published interpretive bands, the report names the band and what it means. It closes with notes on how to read the result and on when a conversation with a qualified professional may be useful.

Report contents
Section	What it shows
Score	Your scale score, computed with the published scoring key.

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