What Is an Imaginary Audience?

Adolescents may have the belief that others are following them like they are. They think that others, especially their peers, have been following them, evaluating them, and are interested in their thoughts and behaviors. Such beliefs have led to an emphasis on self-awareness, an excessive focus on the thoughts of others, and expectations of others' reactions in real and imagined situations. The imaginary audience makes teens vigilant to avoid any behavior that may cause embarrassment, ridicule, or rejection.

Adolescents may have the belief that others are following them like they are. They think that others, especially their peers, have been following them, evaluating them, and are interested in their thoughts and behaviors. Such beliefs have led to an emphasis on self-awareness, an excessive focus on the thoughts of others, and expectations of others' reactions in real and imagined situations. The imaginary audience makes teens vigilant to avoid any behavior that may cause embarrassment, ridicule, or rejection.

Chinese name

Imaginary audience

Foreign name

Imaginary Audience

Applied discipline

psychology

Application range

Developmental psychology

Imaginary viewers and personal myths

During adolescence, individuals experience tremendous changes in body, cognition, and society and emotions. At this time, they paid great attention to themselves and their self-awareness increased significantly. They seemed to have the view that, just as they paid attention to themselves, other people also paid great attention to them, and their evaluations of them were very consistent with their evaluation of themselves. . In the 1960s, under the influence of Piaget's cognitive development theory, Elkind explained some special performances of adolescents as egocentrism in cognitive development. He proposed two dimensions of self-centeredness-hypothetical audience (Imaginary audience) and personal fable.

Experts believe that such psychological characteristics affect the psychological and behavioral phenomena of many adolescents, such as exaggerated feelings about self-awareness, excessive contempt for danger, young people's idealism, and excessive sensitivity to peer pressure. The concepts of imaginary audiences and personal myths have always been used and are used to explain some special psychological and behavioral performances of adolescents.

Definition of imaginary audience concept

In the construction of Elkind et al.'S theory of adolescent egocentricity, the imaginary audience and individual deification are taken as the constituent elements of egocentricity. So these two structures were originally proposed as two dimensions of egocentricity. The thinking patterns reflected by these two structures seem to have special explanatory abilities for some typical adolescent emotions and behaviors, such as self-awareness, compliance with peer group norms, and risky behaviors. Therefore, the two concepts of imaginary audience and personal myth have long been cited and explored in the study of youth development.

Adolescents may have the belief that others are following them like they are. They think that others, especially their peers, have been following them, evaluating them, and are interested in their thoughts and behaviors. Such beliefs lead to an emphasis on self-awareness, an excessive focus on the thoughts of others, and expectations of others' reactions in real and imagined situations. The imaginary audience makes teens vigilant to avoid any behavior that may cause embarrassment, ridicule, or rejection. From the point of view of the Adler school, the imaginary audience represents a broader group, and young people want to belong to this group and gain self-worth from it. Some individual psychologists believe that the idea of an imaginary audience reflects adolescents' desire to appear important among their peers. "Teenage believes that every move he takes is valued and evaluated, so when he thinks that others don't rate him high, he will associate with his status in the group, thus affecting the sense of value and belonging of the young people." . ^[1]