The Estonian Self-Consciousness Scale and Its Relation to the Five-Factor Model of Personality

Abstract

The Self-Consciousness Scale (SCS), developed by Fenigstein, Scheier, and Buss (1975), was adapted to the Estonian language. In general, the results supported the 3-factor structure of the SCS. However, many items in the subscales did not load as expected. A 26-item modified scale, the Estonian SCS (ESCS), is presented. A joint factor analysis of the ESCS and the NEO Personality inventory (NEO-PI) scales led to a 5-factor solution, where all the factors that emerged were identified as the Big Five personality dimensions, the ESCS subscales loading most significantly on 3 of these factors: Neuroticism (N), Extraversion (E), and Openness to Experience (O), Correlation analysis revealed a pattern of correlations, characterized by the strongest associations between Social Anxiety and E (r = -.77), Public Self-Consciousness (PubSC) and N (r = .40), and Private Self-Consciousness (PrivSC) and O (r = .34), which quite well corresponds to the pattern of correlations that was reported for the original versions of the SCS and the NEO-PI (Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, Teta, & Kraft, 1993). We can conclude that all the SCS subscales can be sufficiently well interpreted in terms of the Big Five model of personality dimensions—PrivSC and PubSC appear to describe some variations of the Big Five themes that are not fully elaborated by the NEO-PI rather than being completely independent domains of individual differences.