Much research has found self-awareness to be associated with positive qualities, but we explore cases in which self-awareness sends a negative signal to others. Specifically, we propose that when a target person appears to be high in social self-awareness-that is, the person seems to accurately know what others think of them-observers infer that the target's actions are more intentional because the target is acting while seeming to know what others think of their actions. Because perceived intent is the key input to trust judgments, perceived self-awareness impacts observers' trust toward the target but does so differently depending on whether the target behaves in ways that positively or negatively impact others. When the target behaves in positive ways, exhibiting high (relative to low) self-awareness should increase trust as the positive behaviors will be interpreted as conveying stronger positive intentions toward others. However, for negative behaviors, exhibiting self-awareness should decrease trust, as it should convey stronger negative intent toward others. Across six studies (N = 4,707) using online experiments, a recall study paradigm, and live interactions in a laboratory setting, we find support for this framework. We also show that when we constrain the extent to which people can infer a target's intentions toward others from their behaviors-by reducing the target's control over their own behavior or by reducing the impact of the target's actions on others-the effect of self-awareness on trust attenuates. Our findings suggest that self-awareness, though often considered a desirable quality, does not universally increase others' trust. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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无知可以值得信赖：社会自我意识对信任的影响。


许多研究发现自我意识与积极品质有关，但我们探讨了自我意识向他人发出负面信号的情况。具体来说，我们建议当目标人似乎具有很高的社会自我意识时——也就是说，这个人似乎准确地知道别人对他们的看法——观察者推断目标的行为更加有目的性，因为目标在行动的同时似乎知道别人对他们行为的看法。因为感知意图是信任判断的关键输入，所以感知到的自我意识会影响观察者对目标的信任，但根据目标的行为方式是对他人产生积极还是消极的影响，其影响会有所不同。当目标以积极的方式行事时，表现出高（相对于低）的自我意识应该会增加信任，因为积极的行为将被解释为向他人传达更强烈的积极意图。然而，对于消极行为，表现出自我意识应该会降低信任，因为它应该传达对他人更强烈的消极意图。在使用在线实验、回忆研究范式和实验室环境中的实时互动的六项研究 （N = 4,707） 中，我们发现了对该框架的支持。我们还表明，当我们限制人们可以从目标的行为中推断出目标对他人的意图的程度时——通过减少目标对自己行为的控制或通过减少目标行为对他人的影响——自我意识对信任的影响就会减弱。我们的研究结果表明，自我意识虽然通常被认为是一种理想的品质，但并不能普遍增加他人的信任。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。