Self-presentation

Type of psychology: Social psychology

Self-presentation is behavior with which people try to affect how they are perceived and judged by others; much social behavior is influenced by self-presentational motives and goals.

Introduction

Although they may or may not be consciously thinking about it, people often try to control the information that others receive about them. When they are deliberately trying to make a certain impression on others, people may carefully choose their dress, think about what to say, monitor their behavior, pick their friends, and even decide what to eat. Self-presentation refers to the various behaviors with which people attempt to manage and influence the impressions they make on others. Nearly any public behavior may be strategically regulated in the service of impression management, and people may behave quite differently in the presence of others from the way they behave when they are alone. Moreover, self-presentation is not always a conscious activity; without planning to, people may fall into familiar patterns of behavior that represent personal habits of self-presentation.

The impressions of someone that others form substantially determine how they treat that person. Obviously, if others like and respect someone, they behave differently toward him or her from the way they would if the person were disliked or mistrusted. Thus, it is usually personally advantageous for a person to have some control over what others think of him or her. To the extent that one can regulate one’s image in others’ eyes, one gains influence over their behavior and increases one’s interpersonal power. Self-presentational perspectives on social interaction assume that people manage their impressions to augment their power and maximize their social outcomes.

Impression Management and Strategies

Self-presentation, however, is usually not deceitful. Although people do occasionally misrepresent themselves through lying and pretense, most self-presentation communicates one’s authentic attributes to others. Because frauds and cheats are rejected by others, dishonest self-presentation is risky. Instead, impression management usually involves the attempt to reveal, in a selective fashion, those aspects of one’s true character that will allow one to attain one’s current goals. By announcing some of their attitudes but not mentioning others, for example, people may appear to have something in common with almost anyone they meet; this simple tactic of impression management facilitates graceful and rewarding social interaction and does not involve untruthfulness at all. Over time, genuine, realistic presentations of self in which people accurately reveal portions of themselves to others are likely to be more successful than those in which people pretend to be things they are not.

Nevertheless, because most people have diverse interests and talents, there may be many distinct impressions they can honestly attempt to create, and people may seek different images in different situations. Psychologists Edward Jones and Thane Pittman identified four discrete strategies of self-presentation that produce disparate results. When people seek acceptance and likeability, they typically ingratiate themselves with others by doing favors, paying compliments, mentioning areas of agreement, and describing themselves in attractive, desirable ways. On other occasions, when they wish their abilities to be recognized and respected by others, people may engage in self-promotion, recounting their accomplishments or strategically arranging public demonstrations of their skills. Both ingratiation (a strategy of self-presentation in which one seeks to elicit liking and affection from others) and self-promotion create socially desirable impressions and thus are very common strategies of self-presentation.

In contrast, other strategies create undesirable impressions. Through intimidation, people portray themselves as ruthless, dangerous, and menacing so that others will do their bidding. Such behavior tends to drive others away, but if those others cannot easily escape, intimidation often works. Drill sergeants who threaten recalcitrant recruits usually are not interested in being liked; they want compliance, and the more fierce they seem, the more likely they may be to get it. Finally, using the strategy of supplication, people sometimes present themselves as inept or infirm to avoid obligations and elicit help and support from others.

People’s choices of strategies and desired images depend on several factors, such as the values and preferences of the target audience. People often tailor their self-presentations to fit the interests of the others they are trying to impress. In one study of this phenomenon, college women were given job interviews with a male interviewer who, they were told, was either quite traditional or “liberated” in his views toward women. With this information in hand, the women dressed, acted, and spoke differently for the different targets. They wore more makeup and jewelry, behaved less assertively, and expressed a greater interest in children to the traditional interviewer than they did to the liberated interviewer.

Individuals’ own self-concepts also influence their self-presentations. People typically prefer to manage impressions that are personally palatable, both because they are easier to maintain and because they help bolster self-esteem; however, self-presentations also shape self-concepts. When people do occasionally claim images they personally feel they do not deserve, their audiences may either see through the fraudulent claim and dispute the image or accept it as legitimate. In the latter case, the audience’s approving reactions may gradually convince people that they really do deserve the images they are projecting. Because a person’s self-concept is determined, in part, by feedback received from others, self-presentations that were once inaccurate can become truthful over time as people are gradually persuaded by others that they really are the people they were pretending to be.

Finessing Public Image

Studies of self-presentation demonstrate that people are capable of enormous subtlety as they fine-tune their public images. For example, psychologist Robert Cialdini and his colleagues have identified several ingenious, specific tactics of ingratiation. Observations of students at famous football colleges (such as Notre Dame, Ohio State, the University of Southern California, Arizona, Pittsburgh, and Louisiana State) revealed that after a weekend football victory, students were especially likely to come to class on Monday wearing school colors and insignia. If their team had lost, however, such identifying apparel was conspicuously absent. Further laboratory studies suggested that the students were strategically choosing their apparel to publicize their association with a winning team, a tendency Cialdini called “basking in reflected glory.” By contrast, they were careful not to mention their connection to a loser. In general, people who seek acceptance and liking will advertise their association with other desirable images, while trying to distance themselves from failure and other disreputable images.

Furthermore, they may do this with precise sophistication. In another study by Cialdini, people privately learned that they had a trivial connection—a shared birth date—with another person who was said to have either high or low social or intellectual ability. The participants then encountered a public, personal success or failure when they were informed that they had either high or low social ability themselves. Armed with this information, people cleverly selected the specific self-descriptions that would make the best possible impression on the researchers. If they had failed their social ability test, they typically mentioned their similarity with another person who had high intellect but did not bring up their connection to another person with higher social ability than themselves. They thus publicized a flattering link between themselves and others while steering clear of comparisons that would make them look bad. In contrast, if they had passed the social ability test and the researchers already thought highly of them, people brought up their connection to another person who had poorer social ability. By mentioning their resemblance to less talented others, people not only reminded their audiences of their superior talent, but seemed humble and modest as well.

Self-presentation can be ingenious, indeed. In general, if they wish to ingratiate themselves with others, people with deficient images try to find something good to communicate about themselves that does not contradict the negative information the audience already has. If they are already held in high esteem, however, people typically select modest, self-effacing presentations that demonstrate that they are humble as well as talented.

People do not go to such trouble for everyone, however; if people do not care what a particular audience thinks, they may not be motivated to create any impression at all. One experiment that illustrated this point invited women to “get acquainted” with men who were either desirable or undesirable partners. Snacks were provided; the women who were paired with attractive men ate much less than the women stuck with unappealing partners. Because women who eat lightly are often considered more feminine than those who eat heartily, women who wanted to create a favorable impression strategically limited their snack consumption; in contrast, those who were less eager to impress their partners ate as much as they liked.

Role in Social Anxieties

On occasion, people care too much what an audience thinks. One reason that people suffer from social anxieties such as shyness or stage fright is that their desire to make a particular impression on a certain audience is too high. According to theorists Mark Leary and Barry Schlenker, people suffer from social anxiety when they are motivated to create a certain impression but doubt their ability to do so. Any influence that increases one’s motivation (such as the attractiveness, prestige, or power of an audience) or causes one to doubt one’s ability (such as unfamiliar situations or inadequate personal social skills) can cause social anxiety. This self-presentation perspective suggests that, if excessive social anxiety is a problem, different therapies will be needed for different people. Some sufferers will benefit most from behavioral social skills training, whereas others who have passable skills simply need to worry less what others are thinking of them; cognitive therapies will be best for them.

Role of Self-Monitoring

Finally, people differ in their self-presentational proclivities. Those high in the trait of self-monitoring tend to be sensitive to social cues that suggest how one should act in a particular situation and are adept at adjusting their self-presentations to fit in. By comparison, low self-monitors seem less attentive and flexible and tend to display more stable images regardless of their situational appropriateness. High self-monitors are more changeable and energetic self-presenters, and, as a result, they create social worlds that are different from those of low self-monitors. Because they can deftly switch images from one audience to the next, high self-monitors tend to have wider circles of friends with whom they have less in common than do low self-monitors. Compared to high self-monitors, lows must search harder for partners with whom they share broader compatibilities. Over time, however, lows are likely to develop longer-lasting, more committed relationships with others; they invest more in the partners they have. High self-monitors are more influenced by social image than lows are, a self-presentational difference with important consequences for interaction.

Theoretical Roots and Influences

The roots of self-presentation theory date back to the very beginnings of American psychology and the writings of William James in 1890. James recognized that the human self is multifaceted, and that it is not surprising for different audiences to have very different impressions of the same individual. After James, in the early twentieth century, sociologists Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead stressed that others’ impressions of an individual are especially important, shaping that person’s social life and personal self-concept. The most influential parent of this perspective, however, was Erving Goffman, who was the first to insist that people actively, consciously, and deliberately construct social images for public consumption. Goffman’s book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) eloquently compared social behavior to a theatrical performance staged for credulous audiences, complete with scripts, props, and backstage areas where the actors drop their roles.

As it emerged thereafter, self-presentation theory seemed to be a heretical alternative to established explanations for some social phenomena. For example, whereas cognitive dissonance theory suggested that people sometimes change attitudes that are inconsistent with their behavior to gain peace of mind, self-presentation theory argued that people merely report different attitudes that make them look consistent, without changing their real attitudes at all. Nevertheless, despite theoretical controversy, Goffman’s provocative dramaturgical analogy gradually became more widely accepted as researchers demonstrated that a wide variety of social behavior was affected by self-presentational concerns. With the publication in 1980 of Barry Schlenker’s book-length review of self-presentation research, impression management theory finally entered the mainstream of social psychology.

Importance and Contributions

The lasting importance of self-presentation theory lies in its reminders that people are cognizant of the images they present to others and often thoughtfully attempt to shape those images to accomplish their objectives. As a result, much social behavior has a self-presentational component. An angry boss may have real problems controlling his temper, for example, but he may also occasionally exaggerate his anger to intimidate his employees. Even people suffering from severe mental illness may engage in impression management; research has revealed that individuals who have been institutionalized for schizophrenia sometimes adjust the apparent severity of their symptoms so that they seem well enough to be granted special privileges without seeming so healthy that they are released back into the threatening free world. In this case, self-presentation theory does not suggest that people with schizophrenia are merely pretending to be disturbed; obviously, people suffering from psychosis are burdened by real psychological or biological problems. Impression management, however, may contribute in part to their apparent illness, just as it does to many other social behaviors. In general, self-presentation theory does not claim to replace other explanations for behavior, but it does assert that much of what people do is influenced by self-presentational motives and concerns.

Bibliography

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