Privately self-conscious people may resist social pressures because (a) they tune out the social matrix and express their beliefs irrespective of how they make them appear to an audience (the social obliviousness hypothesis) or (b) they prefer to create an identity of being autonomous and will monitor and control their self-presentations to construct this image for audiences (the autonomous identity hypothesis). The results of three studies supported the latter. The self-identifications of privately self-conscious subjects emphasized autonomy and personal identity, whereas those of publicly self-conscious subjects emphasized conformity, social identity, and social trepidations. An experiment found that privately self-conscious subjects publicly changed their attitudes if by so doing they protected the appearance of autonomy. Private and public self-consciousness are often characterized as exemplars of contrasting styles of self-regulation (Buss, 1980; Carver & Scheier, 1985,1987; Fenigstein, 1987; Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975). People who are publicly self-conscious are supposedly the epitome of the social animal. Public selfconsciousness is associated with concerns about how one appears to others, and it has been suggested that taking the role of others and imagining their reactions to oneself (Mead, 1934) uniquely characterizes a public self-focus (Buss, 1980; Carver & Scheier, 1987; Fenigstein, 1987). Carver and Scheier (1985) have suggested that the goals and principles publicly self-conscious people use to regulate their conduct take into account the desires and expectations of others (p. 167). People high in public self-consciousness are portrayed as outer directed, conformist, and interested in getting along by going along. For example, they (a) are more concerned about their personal appearance and believe appearance is important for smooth social interaction (Miller & Cox, 1982), (b) consider social as opposed to personal aspects of identity important (Cheek & Briggs, 1982), (c) are more susceptible to pressures to conform (Framing & Carver, 1981; Scheier, 1980), (d) try to distinguish themselves from a negative reference group by reporting different attitudes (Carver & Humphries, 1981), and (e) are more sensitive to the opinions of others because they are more affected by possible rejection (Fenigstein, 1979) and more accurate in predicting the impressions they make on others (Tobey & Tunnell, 1981). Consequently, publicly self-conscious people have been depicted as chameleon-like impression managers who base their public conduct on social contingencies, not personal convictions. In fact, public self-consciousness has been explicitly equated with pretension and deceit, and it is primarily individuals high in public self-consciousness who have been accused of engaging in self-presentation to others (Buss & Briggs, 1984).