Self-Consciousness

It is the social face of negative emotion, and it behaves quite differently from the private kinds.

High scorers are acutely aware of how they are landing, and feel shame readily. Low scorers are comparatively unbothered by being watched.

This facet frequently contradicts the rest of its domain. Someone can be almost entirely free of anxiety, anger and low mood and still score at the very top here — and that combination says something a single Neuroticism number completely erases.

Four public-domain statements, answered on a five-point scale. Items marked − are reverse keyed: agreeing with them counts against the trait, which is what stops agreeing with everything from producing a high score.

• +Find it difficult to approach others
• +Am afraid to draw attention to myself
• +Only feel comfortable with friends
• -Am not bothered by difficult social situations

Four items is not many. A facet measured this way carries real uncertainty, which is why every score on this site is reported as a range rather than a single number.

This is one of the traits asked four times over — once for each level of closeness, from your inner circle out to strangers. Our prediction for it: open.

NO DIRECTIONAL PREDICTION. Whether shame is sharper before strangers or before people whose judgement you cannot escape is genuinely open, and either answer is informative.

• +I worry about what ⟨group⟩ think of me.
• +I am easily embarrassed in front of ⟨group⟩.
• -I feel at ease being myself around ⟨group⟩.

⟨group⟩ is replaced by each of the four closeness anchors in turn.