Objective self-awareness is attention focused on the self as a socially evaluable object, as defined by Shelley Duval, Robert A. Wicklund, and other contemporary social psychologists.

Since the original debut of Duval and Wicklund's self-awareness theory in 1972, many experimental psychologists have refined theory and ideas concerning the causes and consequences of self-focused attention. Self-focused attention or self-awareness as often discussed