A test of sharkey and singelis’ (1995) model of selfconstrual and embarrassability: Situational versus dispositional factors

Sharkey and Singelis (1995) tested a model of embarrassment focusing on strength of independent self-construal, sensitivity to evaluation, and strength of interdependent self-construal. Their findings indicated social anxiety and self-construal explained 28% of the variance in embarrassability. Separately, social anxiety contributed 5.8%, with independent and interdependent self-construal explaining 6.6 and 5.2%, respectively, thus supporting the model. Sharkey and Singelis used Modigiliani's (1968) Embarrassability Scale, which focuses on embarrassing situations. The current study repeated the analysis but measured embarrassability as a disposition on a sample of Black African (59.8%), Colored (6.1%), Asian/Indian (5.9%), and White (28.2%) first-year psychology students (139 men, 485 women) between 18 and 51 years old (M = 19.5, SD = 2.9). The three constructs together explained about 47% of dispositional embarrassability. Social anxiety explained 25% of the variance, when controlling for independent and interdependent self-construal. Sharkey and Singelis’ model may be more applicable to the explanation of situational embarrassability than dispositional embarrassability.