Imaginary audience

The imaginary audience refers to an egocentric state where an individual imagines and believes that multitudes of people are enthusiastically listening to or watching him or her. Though this state is often exhibited in young adolescence, people of any age may harbor a fantasy of an imaginary audience.

David Elkind coined the term "imaginary audience" in 1967. The basic premise of the topic is that people who are experiencing it feel as though their behavior or actions are the main focus of other people's attention. It is defined as how willing a child is to reveal alternative forms of themselves. The imaginary audience is a psychological concept common to the adolescent stage of human development. It refers to the belief that a person is under constant, close observation by peers, family, and strangers. This imaginary audience is proposed to account for a variety of adolescent behaviors and experiences, such as heightened self-consciousness, distortions of others' views of the self, and a tendency toward conformity and faddisms. This act stems from the concept of ego-centrism in adolescents.

Elkind studied the effects of imaginary audience and measured it using the Imaginary Audience Scale (IAS). The results of his research showed that boys were more willing than girls to express different sides of themselves to an audience. This apprehension from girls has given rise to further research on the value of privacy to girls. Imaginary audience influences behavior later in life in regards to risky behaviors and decision-making techniques. A possibility is that imaginary audience is correlated with a fear of evaluation or self-representation effects on self-esteem.

The phenomenon stems from egocentrism and is closely related to another topic called 'personal fable'. (Personal Fable involves a sense of "I am Unique.") Imaginary audience effects are not a neurological disorder, but more a personality or developmental stage of life. It is not aroused by a life event; rather it is a part of the developmental process throughout adolescence. It is a natural part of the process of developing a healthy understanding of one’s relationship with the world. Most people will eventually gain a more realistic perspective on the roles they play in their peer groups as they mature. This natural developmental process can lead to high paranoia about whether the adolescence is being watched, if they are doing a task right and if people are judging them. Imaginary audience will likely cease before adolescence ends, as it is a huge part of personality development. Imaginary audience can be as simple as having to change multiple times in the morning because the adolescent still feels unsatisfactory about arriving at a destination about his/her appearance even though he/she will appear the same as everyone else. The number of adolescents who experience an imaginary audience effect cannot be described with any sort of statistics because an imaginary audience is experienced in all adolescents.

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