Reduction of Self-Consciousness

The major orientation to deindividuation has roots going back to the writings of LeBon in The Crowd (1895/1960). It guided the early contem-porary work on the concept (Festinger, Pepitone, & Newcomb, 1952; Singer, Brush, & Lublin, 1965; Zimbardo, 1970) and has had a major im-pact on recent theoretical and empirical work. It is assumed that the individual's submergence in the group lowers self-awareness and concern for evaluation by others. She is not given attention as an individual. As a result, there is a reduction of the usual inner restraints against doing cer-tain things—satisfying needs that are usually inhibited. Once the behavior is carried out, the satisfaction generalizes to the group, making the group attractive to the individual. Thus, according to this first form of theorizing, evidence for deindividuation as an inferred process comes from two things: performance of the usually inhibited (read undesirable) behavior and attraction to the group (Festinger et al, 1952; Singer et al, 1965).

In Zimbardo's (1970) elaboration of this thinking, he stressed that prosocial, loving, and creative behavior as well as undesirable and anti-social behavior can be inhibited but released when deindividuated. He specified the behavior as not only unrestrained and impulsive, but unresponsive to external cues, beyond cognitive control, and self-maintaining and self-intensifying as the person yields to strong impulse. He offered a list of external and internal factors presumed to foster the state: anonymity, diffused responsibility, group size, intensity of involvement in group activity, altered time perspective, arousal, sensory input overload, physical involvement in the act, reliance on noncognitive interactions and feed-back, novel or unstructured situations, and altered states of con-sciousness. Only some of these are group-based. The others imply loss of a sense of identity and loss of self-consciousness because of the level of ac-tivity and the narrowing of perspective, whether others are present or not.

These latter factors depart from our present social orientation and become matters for individual, rather than social, psychology. However, the strictly social factors are assumed to have an impact on such internal qualities as unresponsiveness to external cues, loss of cognitive control, and so on. This makes the inferred internal state more complex than merely a reduction of restraints and a feeling of attraction for the group, as earlier stated.

Following Zimbardo's highly speculative paper, empirical work intensified. After a number of years, Diener (1977) reviewed the evidence for various deindividuation effects and for the inferred processes and found it to be inconsistent and inconclusive. Anonymity, for example, though a presumed antecedent of deindividuation, is not identical with the state; and the experimental effects of anonymity appear inconsistent with any deindividuation analysis. Diener (1979a), therefore, attempted to restrict the concept, and he defined it in terms of the person who is experiencing it, so that a deindividuated person is one who is prevented from being self-aware by factors in the situation. Awareness of self as an individual separate from the group is blocked as is monitoring of one's own behavior. Such terms as prevent and block are taken to be relative, not absolute. They suggest an environmental deterministic orientation rather than surrender to impulses and unresponsiveness to stimulus control as Zimbardo (1970) emphasized. That is, self-awareness is "pre-vented" because the group, not the individuals in it, is the focus of attention and because attention is away from self due to a heavy load on "conscious processing capacity," because of involvement in the action, and because of having surrendered decision making to the group. Thus, when self-monitoring and self-reinforcement are reduced, there is an absence of reference to social and personal standards of behavior, a greater responsiveness to cues and emotions, an absence of planning and foresight, and a reduced concern for punishment and the evaluation of others.

Uniqueness and Social Identity

Ziller (1964) took another tack, somewhat anticipated by Festinger et al. (1952), in discussing deindividuation (see also Dipboye, 1977). Ziller describes the individual as being in tension between the need for individuation and an ego identity and the need for deindividuation by submersion in and identification with the group. Individuals will swing with this pendulum depending on their unique ego identity needs and environmental contingencies. Each individual strives to develop an optimal balance between deindividuation and individuation so that both ego identity and group affiliation needs are met.

Having experienced situations involving both individuation and deindividuation, persons make choices and adopt strategies. They learn, for example, that special rewards go to specific persons in school, at work, etc., so they try to appear unique in a potentially rewarding situation but not when punishment is forthcoming (Maslach, 1974). When punishment is in the offing, persons may strive for deindividuation so that it is difficult to single them out.

With Ziller's (1964) analysis, it is clear that there are times when a person will wish to recede into the group and be comforted by being deindividuated. Yet, the primary emphasis is on satisfactions derived through establishing identity and self-definition. As Ziller points out, those leaders who give recognition are liked, as are those groups where individuation is fostered through selective rewards. This is a reversal of deindividuation theory as stated in the preceding section in which deindividuation is assumed to be satisfying and promotive of group attraction.

(...)


DARKNESS

We have already noted that Singer et al. (1965) found time of day to be an environmental factor affecting the subjects' behavior. In a somewhat related study, Gergen, Gergen, and Barton (1973) had groups of college students, four males and four females, spend an hour in a room with the lights on or in total darkness. It was assumed that the latter subjects would be anonymous; however, some of the findings are damaging for that assumption. Not only did subjects in the dark room converse at a high rate during the first 30 min, 92% reported they introduced themselves by their first name (Braun & Linder, 1979, p. 29). The instructions were that they were free to relate in any manner they wished, and they were told to remove shoes, watches, earrings, rings, glasses, and the con-tents of their pockets. It can be argued that during the early part of the session a norm gradually emerged in the dark room that specified behavior not typical of a lighted room. The instructions certainly must have contributed to defining what was expected. Observations showed that all subjects touched another in the dark room and only 16% reported that they prevented touch. More specifically, 100% touched accidentally and 88% touched purposely, and very little contact was repelled. That is, moving about, touching, and hugging (48%) were cued, initiated, and ac-cepted in the dark room. There was only 5 % accidental touching and no purposeful touching reported in the lighted room. The dark room situation certainly was an unusual one for a subject reporting for an experiment on "environmental psychology." Persons in unusual situations have to figure out, with the help of others, how to respond. The emergent norm and contagion brought about behavior that certainly was different from what went on in the orderly lighted room, but it is difficult to say if it went against usual restraints because we do not know what restraints are usual in such an unusual situation. Gergen et ah reported that when other groups were run in the dark room for an additional 30 min, even more of the "unusual" behavior was observed. That is, they observed what the situation did to the participants; they did not observe every variety of unfettered behavior (no assaults or aggression) that a collection of individuals might unleash.

These studies of cues suggest no real loss of self-awareness or lack of conscious regulation of behavior. Though the results have been offered as evidence for deindividuation, they seem rather to evidence concern regarding proper (or, at least, approved) behavior in a complex, contrived situation. Any evidence of enjoyment or discomfort appears to relate to external features of the environment.

Svenn Lindskold and L. Rebecca Propst
Deindividuation, Self-Awareness, and Impression Management

In:

Impression Management Theory and Social Psychological Research
Edited by JAMES T. TEDESCHI 

The aim? To defend and even enhance the positive self-image

 People can hold good or bad opinions about themselves. These opinions relate to particular characteristics, competences and skills, or they can be of a more general nature. Psychologists are generally in agreement that such convictions are of importance, but controversy arises around the reasons why this is so. High levels of  self-esteem obviously result in an individual experiencing positive  emotions: it is pleasing to think of oneself as competent, humorous or physically attractive. This is why people try to find the good in themselves, applying an incredibly broad range of strategies and techniques that enable them to defend and even enhance their positive self-image. For example, they attribute success to themselves rather than others, while chalking failure up to others instead of themselves (e.g. Gilbert, 1995), they are eager to disclose any link they may have to famous people, which gives them pride and satisfaction (Cialdini, Borden, Thorne, Walker, Freeman & Sloan 1976), and they also exhibit tendencies towards bias in comparing themselves to others, maintaining their belief that they are better (Wills, 1981). It would, however, be an oversimplification to make the assumption that all of these efforts are based solely on the desire to experience pleasing emotions. Researchers emphasize that an affirmative view of oneself is a condition of effective task performance, as well as of making both short- and long-term plans (Taylor & Brown, 1988). Thus, striving to view oneself in even a slightly exaggerated positive light is adaptive. Yet another aspect is highlighted by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg and Tom Pyszczynski (1991), authors of terror management theory. According to this notion, humans are the only entities on earth aware of their own mortality, this awareness being the source of fear and of threats. However, an individual can maintain the pretence of being immortal in both the literal and symbolic sense. Literal immortality is offered by the vast majority of religions, promising everlasting continuation of the soul and a second life after the one on earth. Symbolic immortality, on the other hand, is ensured by participation in broadly-taken culture, whose lifespan is far longer than that of an individual. High self-esteem allows individuals to feel they are valuable elements of culture (or a part of it, such as a nation or a group of a football club’s fans). Thus, maintaining positive beliefs about oneself is a means of reducing the terror that results from being aware that our life must, eventually, end. Roy Baumeister and Dianne Tice (1990) do not concur with these assumptions. They do not directly dispute the theory itself that awareness of mortality gives rise to fear, but they rather feel that the bulk of people’s daily anxieties are grounded in the threat of exclusion from the community in which we function. A strong majority of communities accepts competent, honest and valuable individuals. The conviction that one fulfils these requirements leads to a weakening of the aforementioned fear. So, while Solomon, Greenberg and Pyszczynski on the one hand, and Baumeister and Tice on the other, posit completely different sources for the majority of human beings’ fears, they are in agreement that the antidote to them is positive self-assessment.

 Most people are concerned, not only with what they think of themselves, but also with how they are viewed by others. We try to manipulate the impression we make on others so that they think of us in a manner consistent with our own interests. Sometimes we desire for people to like us, other times we want them to fear us, or even to treat us as helpless and in need of immediate assistance (e.g. Leary & Allen, 2011). When others react in the way we desire, this also contributes to improving and maintaining our  self-esteem.

In recent decades, an increasing amount of empirical data has begun to indicate that processes associated with one’s feeling of self-worth are not necessarily conscious ones. Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji (1995) propose applying the term ‘implicit self-esteem’. People are not aware of their special relationship to things associated closely with the “I”, even while those things are totally unrelated to their attitudes, skills and level of competence.

While the effects associated with people’s tendency to care for their positive self-image and to make the desired impression on others are strong and undisputed, the question is rarely addressed in research of how mechanisms associated with this can be used in successfully exerting influence over others. It appears that such studies are focused primarily on four social influence techniques: using the  name of one’s interlocutor; emphasizing one’s incidental similarity to that person; drawing attention to discrepancies between publicly declared and actual behaviour; and exploiting the presence of a witness to the interaction. In this chapter I will discuss each of these techniques in turn.

  Using the name of one’s interlocutor  

When Napoleon’s army occupied the Netherlands in 1811, the emperor issued a decree ordering all residents of the country to officially register their surnames. Family names were not widespread at the time in the Netherlands but were the exclusive domain of people at the top of the social ladder. For many of those at the bottom of it, Napoleon’s decree must have seemed a needless extravagance. The Dutch thus began thinking up quite exotic surnames for themselves, such as: Naaktgeboren (Born Naked), Den Boef (Swindler) or Poepjes (Little Halfwit). While surnames may have seemed unnecessary in some countries and during some periods of history, since the dawn of human civilization no one has questioned the need to use first names. The status of an individual without a name can be compared to one stripped of honour, or even of humanity (Koole & Pelham, 2003). As a result, for many years a person’s name has borne exceptional significance.

 Jozef Nuttin (1984) described his impressions from a holiday he took with his wife. At one moment he observed that some of the licence plates on cars passing him were evoking warm feelings. After thinking about it, he concluded that this was probably from the plates that contained the letters of his name or digits corresponding to his date of birth. This constatation served as a starting point for a sterling series of empirical studies in which Nuttin demonstrated that people do, in fact, exhibit an unusual preference for the letters that compose their name.

Further studies conducted around the world demonstrated that the first letters of a name in particular seem to have impressive power. It turns out that individual letters are liked more by people whose names begin with just those letters (Kitayama & Karasawa, 1997; Koole, Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 2001). In our experiments (Dolinski, 2005), the first letters of names were described by participants as having a more pleasing shape (perhaps a surprising conclusion) than letters that did not form a part of their own names. This effect was also observed in respect of letters printed from the commonplace computer programme Word for Windows (the fonts Courier and Times New Roman were used), as well as decorative letters, such as can be found at the beginnings of chapters in older volumes.

Brett Pelham, Matthew Mirenberg and John Jones (2002) demonstrated that the initial letters of first names have an influence on professional careers and on the places that people inhabit. For example, among American den 

tists there is a large number of people named Den nis (and vice versa, many people named Den nis are den tists), while a far greater number than chance would indicate of women named V irginia live in V irginia Beach. People with the first name or surname of S aint, more often than coincidence could explain, decide to take up residence in S aint Louis, S aint Paul or S aint Joseph. The special role of one’s first name is also attested to by the cocktail party effect.

During a cocktail party, people generally stand around in small groups, and in this intimate company discuss various things. The selectivity of top-down attention means that they can block out voices coming from other small groups, focusing on what someone in their immediate vicinity is saying. The din, often loud, bothers them a bit, but they are able to tune it out to such a degree that, in a sense, they don’t hear it. However, if their own name pops up in this ignored murmur, not only do they register it immediately, but they also begin listening to what the person who has just used their name is saying. People are thus both ignoring and not (completely) ignoring this din at the same time: one’s own name is a stimulus so strong that it has the fascinating power to divert others’ attention. In the context of this chapter, the cocktail party effect constitutes an outstanding example of the importance of one’s own name. From a purely practical perspective, it advises us to avoid speaking the name of the person we would like to gossip about. We mustn’t be deceived by the fact that Christine is standing some distance from us and seems to be completely absorbed in her own, private conversation.

TECHNIQUES OF SOCIAL INFLUENCE

The psychology of gaining compliance

Dariusz Dolinski

Internalizing Self-Presentations: Saying Is (or Can Be) Believing

 

The actor’s public self-presentations, which may initially have been intended largely to create a desired impact on others, may come to influence the actor’s subsequent private self-assessments. Early social theorists like Cooley (1902) and Mead (1934) proposed that the self is constructed through social interaction, as people come to view themselves partly in terms of the roles they publicly enact and other people’s reactions to them. Consistent with this view, research shows that people’s strategic self-presentations will produce changes in their subsequent self-appraisals, as people change their global self- evaluations (Gergen, 1965; Jones et al., 1981; Rhodewalt & Agustsdottir, 1986) and the corresponding contents of their self-beliefs (McKillop, Berzonsky, & Schlenker, 1992; Schlenker, Dlugolecki, & Doherty, 1994; Schlenker & Trudeau, 1990; Tice, 1992) to become more like the public roles they played.

People are more likely to internalize their self-presentations when their actions appear to be representative of self. The appearance of representativeness is created when people freely chose to play the role or are asked to draw on their own prior personal experiences when enacting the role rather than on experiences that are obviously taken from the life of someone else (Jones et al., 1981; Rhodewalt & Agustsdottir, 1986; Schlenker & Trudeau, 1990; Tice, 1992). There are limits to how extreme role-playing can be before the actor rejects it as unrepresentative. Roles that are greatly discrepant from clear prior self-beliefs are not internalized; people reject them as “not me” (Schlenker & Trudeau, 1990). However, if the role is only somewhat discrepant from clear prior self-beliefs, or if self-beliefs are less clearly formed on the dimension, people will shift their private self-beliefs in the direction of the role (Schlenker & Trudeau, 1990). Furthermore, social validation is important in perceiving representativeness. People are more likely to internalize public portrayals that are met with approval and acceptance from others (Gergen, 1965). Thus, to the extent that people label their own public actions as self-representative or have the label applied by others, they become more likely to see themselves in corresponding ways.

Role or identity enactments have a more powerful impact on private self-beliefs when they carry with them a public commitment, as compared to when they are privately performed with few or no public repercussions. Tice (1992) found that self-characterizations produced more change in self- conceptions if they were enacted publicly rather than privately. Furthermore, public behavior produced more change if it was freely selected, drew on episodes of one’s own past rather than on the obvious pasts of others, and involved expected future interactions with the audience. Schlenker et al. (1994) found that having people think about past experiences that were consistent with specific roles did not affect later self-beliefs, but having people play the role publicly produced shifts in self-appraisals. In another study, Schlenker et al. (1994) had participants role play a desirable identity. Those whose characterizations were made during an actual interview or who made a public commitment to portray that identity in an upcoming interview later shifted their self-beliefs to become more like the person they portrayed.

In contrast, those who learned that they would not have to portray that identity because the interview was canceled, and those whose portrayals were private, did not change their self-beliefs. These findings indicate that public commitment has a powerful shaping effect on private self-beliefs.

Public self-presentations can not only produce corresponding changes in self-beliefs, they can also produce changes in behavior in new situations with different audiences (Tice, 1992; Schlenker et al., 1994). Participants who presented themselves as more extraverted rather than introverted (Tice, 1992) or who portrayed themselves as more sociable (Schlenker et al., 1994), acted in a more extraverted, sociable way when later meeting a new person. Thus, self-presentations can produce carry-over effects that linger beyond the initial interaction. If one wants to become a certain type of person, one should try to publicly act like that type of person. Eventually, if the portrayal is unmarred by out-of-character incidents and audience feedback appears to be accepting, one is likely to become it.

As this research suggests, authenticity is not a static concept. Self-presentations that once may have been tentatively proffered and tenuously documented can become true as the actor gains confidence playing the role and receives feedback suggesting that others accept the portrayal. Thus, the somewhat shy student who wants to become more outgoing can, through hard work, perseverance, and public commitment to new self-presentations, gradually become, in his or her own mind and in social reality, more extraverted.

Truth in Packaging

The theme of this section is that packaging information to achieve goals is independent of truthfulness or sincerity. Packaging can be guided by the goal of aiding the audience by imparting truth, as in the case of the teacher who wants to impart useful information to students, or by the goal of selfishly manipulating the audience, as in the caricature of the deceptive used-car salesperson. Stories or narratives can be true or false in their major themes as well as in the factual detail that is communicated to support them.

Sometimes true stories contain unintended errors of factual detail, and lies contain just enough true facts to make them appear credible. To determine deceit, one must look to the motives of the actor and the extent to which the message corresponds with information that can be independently assessed, not to whether information is packaged for consumption by audiences.

Information may be packaged in nearly unlimited ways to make desired points. This is not to suggest, however, that all is appearance without substance or that any and all interpretations of reality are equally valid. Reality imposes constraints on what can be credibly claimed. There are rules for de¬ termining the truthfulness of an assertion and comparing claims to accomplishments and characteristics. Goffman (1959, p. 13) noted that society is organized on the principle that people who have certain social characteristics have a “moral right” to expect that others will “value and treat” them in the appropriate fashion and, correspondingly, that people have a duty to be what they claim to be. People are socialized to match their words and their deeds and to tell the truth. Society cannot function if deceit on substantive matters is tolerated.

A reputation for honesty is an important interpersonal asset. People react negatively to those whose words and deeds deviate (Schlenker & Leary, 1982a). Furthermore, when presenting themselves to others, people demonstrate an appreciation of the importance of consistency between words and deeds. People present themselves consistently with publicly known information about them, even though they may exaggerate their claims when potentially contradictory information can be hidden from public view (Baumeister & Jones, 1978; Schlenker, 1975). Reality, in the form of publicly known information and independently verifiable facts, provides constraints on what people can credibly claim.

People do not have free reign to package information in any and all ways that serve their self-interests. People are accountable to others for being what they claim to be, and they risk social censure and sometimes legal peril for deceit. However, deceit is determined by judgments of the actor’s motives and whether independently verifiable information supports or refutes the claims. The packaging of information for consumption by audiences, in and of itself, tells us nothing about the actor’s truthfulness.

THE STRATEGIC CONTROL OF INFORMATION: IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT AND SELF-PRESENTATION IN DAILY LIFE BARRY R. SCHLENKER BETH A. PONTARI

In PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SELF AND IDENTITY

Impression management the self-concept, social identity, and interpersonal relations by Barry R Schlenker

PREFACE

Impression management, or image control, is a central aspect of interpersonal relations. Consciously or unconsciously, people attempt to control images in real or imagined social interactions. By doing so, they define the nature of the interaction, the identities they and others possess, and the meanings of their interpersonal actions. What people believe they “are” and the outcomes they receive from social life are both predicated in large part on impression management.

The importance of studying impression management has been ap- preciated by many social psychologists. However, a number of obstacles have impeded work. First, the area has been somewhat fragmented and compartmentalized. Symbolic interactionists—social psychologists who happen to be housed primarily in sociology departments—and experimental social psychologists—housed primarily in psychology departments—have each made major contributions. But surprisingly little cross-fertilization has occurred, each group remaining cool, unin- terested, and often ignorant of the work of the other. One goal of the present book is to provide an integrative approach to the area.

Second, a number of misconceptions exist about impression management. The term has numerous negative connotations that make it seem more appropriate for students of public relations than for students of social psychology. It brings to mind automatons programmed to smile appropriately and do everything in their power to please or even con an audience. Impression management can involve such behavior, but it also involves much more. In i its full sense impression management is integral to the study of the self, identity, and imterpersonal relations. One goal of this book is to demonstrate revelance of the topic to this wide array of phenomena.

Third, the impression-management approach frequently has been criticized for failing to develop specific, testable hypotheses. It is true that no definitive theory of impression management has yet been achieved. Yet the elements of such a theory are beginning to take form.

The approach is becoming increasingly refined and is hardly lacking in precise hypotheses fit for the experimental crucible. No claims are made that this book presents a finalized theory, but it is hoped that it provides an impetus for theory development and enough hypotheses to generate even more work in the area.

Finally, there has been no book from which students could gain a general exposure to ideas and research in the area. The present book is intended to serve this purpose. It does not attempt to be encyclopedic in its coverage; several volumes would be required for that. Nor does it attempt to provide a detailed, critical examination of the methodology and research done in the area.

Although such an examination would undoubtedly please some advanced readers, it would detract from the usefulness of the book for those who want only to gain a general appreciation of the area. Instead, my aim is to provide a single, reasonably concise volume that serves as an introduction to the study of impression management.

In places, the book seems to take a “how-to-do-it” turn, as when it discusses how to use nonverbal signals to increase interpersonal attraction. In general I tried to avoid that style, but I succumbed every now and then for at least three reasons. First, the data that exist in some areas are decidedly one-sided. In general there has been much less re- search on people's actions than on their reactions. There is research that shows how observers respond to a particular behavior used by an actor (for example, how observers respond when an actor uses one nonverbal action rather than another), but less research on the conditions that determine when an actor will use such behaviors. Thus, we often know what "works" on audiences but don’t necessarily know that actors will use these efficacious strategies under appropriate conditions. It is reasonable, though, to believe that people learn what works during the course of their social lives and use these strategies when called for; indeed, a variety of anecdotal data (often found in explicit ““how-to-do- it’’ books) suggests that people are sensitive to such audience reactions and take advantage of them. In presenting such material it is difficult to avoid statements such as “‘People who are attempting to increase their attractiveness to an audience should... .’’ Second, the question of how audiences react to particular strategies is interesting in its own right, and I didn’t feel like excluding such material merely because research on the opposite side of the coin has not yet been done. Finally, it is often easier to write in a “how-to-do-it” manner than to stay committed to a more neutral style. I tried to fight the urge, but I plead guilty to slipping on occasion. (...)

**
THE SELF-CONCEPT AS A SELF-THEORY

Chapter 2 discussed the theme that people are naive scientists who build theories to help them understand their environment and function effectively within it. These theories extend to the self. Seymour Epstein (1973, p. 407) defined the self-concept as ‘‘a theory the individual has unwittingly constructed about himself as an experiencing, functioning individual ... part of a broader theory which he holds with respect to his entire range of significant experience.” It contains a cache of per- sonal facts of the types James discussed in describing one’s bodily ap- pearance, possessions, friends, and so forth. It contains self-constructs such as being friendly, intelligent, and independent. It contains hypotheses, or beliefs, that relate aspects of these facts and constructs to each other (for example, “I am independent and hence don’t conform to the opinions of others’’). One’s aspirations can also enter the picture to produce a self-concept that represents a blend of one’s actualities and potentialities (R. H. Turner, 1968).

Self-Constructs: Categorizing Ourselves

Self-constructs, also called self-schemata, are key aspects of the self-concept. Self-constructs are cognitive categories or generalizations about the self. People categorize themselves on construct dimensions such as conforming-independent, friendly-unfriendly, competent- incompetent, and dominant-submissive. Like other types of constructs, self-constructs are summary terms that subsume numerous facts. One can’t keep track of each and every personal behavior or self-relevant fact, but one can deal with a limited number of constructs that seem to integrate these facts into meaningful categories. If, for example, you are asked to describe your mental abilities, you undoubtedly would be unable to recall all the behaviors that might be relevant. But it is quite easy to list self-descriptive constructs that encompass such facts: ‘‘mod- erately creative,” ‘‘excellent memory,” ‘‘strong on verbal fluency,” “‘average on quantitative ability,” and so on. People find it easy to explain their own actions within such frameworks.

Self-constructs are not uniquely or simply determined by facts. Imagine a person having a conversation with a co-worker who privately disagrees with the colleague's opinion but who publicly expresses some agreement with it. Is this person conforming, submissive, tactful, friendly, ingratiating, self-doubting, or something else? On the basis of the behavior alone it is impossible to tell. If you knew a variety of other facts about the person and situation, they could narrow the possibilities. For example, knowing that the person has high self-esteem might eliminate the construct ‘‘self-doubting.”’ But even when many such facts are known, there are alternative constructs that could be applied to describe the same set of facts. There is never a situation where one set of facts can be explained by only one construct.

Instead of constructs’ being dictated by facts, constructs help us to interpret facts. Facts are given meanings by the constructs. In the example, the act of publicly agreeing while privately disagreeing would be given meaning as soon as it were interpreted as, say, “ingratiation,” and that meaning is quite different from the meaning associated with the construct ‘‘tactful." People have some latitude in the constructs they apply to interpret their behaviors, and they attempt to apply constructs that they find personally desirable in maximizing their outcomes from social interaction. Most people, for example, prefer the self-construct “tactful” over the self-construct “ingratiating” and will go to great lengths to convince themselves and others that the former rather than the latter “‘really" describes their behavior.

Self-constructs organize and guide the ways people process self-related information. Once a particular self-construct is well established—that is, formed, used continually, and supported by a lot of data—it becomes increasingly resistant to contradictory information.

We tend to notice behaviors that support that construct and interpret behaviors in terms of that construct rather than another. A person who normally categorizes herself as tactful and independent is more likely to interpret the behavior in the example (publicly agreeing while privately disagreeing) as demonstrating tact and not conformity. Research indicates that established cognitive categories do become increasingly immune to overthrow by single instances (see Carson, 1969; Mischel, 1973; Neisser, 1967, 1976).

Once established, self-constructs serve as selective devices that “determine whether information is attended to, how it is structured, how much importance is attached to it, and what happens to it subsequently” (Markus, 1977, p. 64). Self-constructs give meanings to our worlds. To demonstrate the importance of self-constructs, Hazel Markus (1977) classified students into those who had well articulated self-constructs on an important dimension (independence versus dependence) and those who did not. Those with well articulated self- constructs were able to process construct-related information faster, made related judgments and decisions about themselves more easily, were better able to recall related behaviors, were more self-confident in predicting their own future relevant actions, and were more resistant to information that contradicted these self-constructs. Markus concluded that “only when a self-description derives from a well-articulated generalization about the self can it be expected to converge and form a consistent pattern with the individual's other judgments, decisions, and actions” (p. 65). Self-constructs thus affect actions by affecting how people attend to, interpret, and respond to situations (Markus, 1977; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977; Rogers, Rogers, & Kuiper, 1979; R. (G:
Turner, 1978). In this sense, people who know themselves or at least think they do—that is, have well-articulated self-constructs—can more easily process information and make decisions about what is best for them. They believe they know what they are and therefore what they should and can do in various situations.

Expectations: Deciding What to Do

Self-constructs affect our expectations of what we should do and can do in various situations. Suppose you viewed yourself as independent, and your roommate asked you to sign a petition supporting an issue you didn’t really support. What should you do? The answer is clear: to be independent, you should resist your roommate's pressure and refuse to sign. If you didn’t view yourself as independent, your answer might be quite different. Or suppose you view yourself as introverted, poor at social conversation, physically unappealing, and lacking in sex appeal. What do you think your chances are of getting the gregarious and attractive classmate you admire to go out on a date and return your affection? You would probably expect failure. If you held the opposite set of self-constructs, you would anticipate greater success. Thus, self-constructs can affect people’s expectations about what they should do and how effective they will be in various situations.

Albert Bandura (1977b) discussed self-efficacy expectations, which are beliefs “that one can successfully execute the behavior required to produce” particular outcomes (p. 193). As Bandura indicates, self-efficacy expectations determine whether a person will begin to cope with a potentially unpleasant situation and will work to accomplish some goal, how much effort the person will expend to reach the goal, and how long the person will continue to work in the face of frustrations and aversions. People who believe they can effectively accomplish some goal will begin sooner, work harder, and continue longer than those who do not. Our expectations, which are influenced by our self-constructs, thus have great impact on our behaviors. If you expect that nothing you can do will get the attractive classmate to agree to a date, why even ask? You will just be rejected. If you expect that your agreeable and sophisticated manner will surely get him or her to say “yes,” don’t hesitate for a moment.

Functions of the Self-Concept

Epstein (1973, p. 407) argues that the self-concept has three major functions for a person. It should (a) ‘‘optimize the pleasure/pain balance of the individual over the course of a lifetime,” (b) ‘‘organize the data of experience in a manner that can be coped with effectively,’ and (c) facilitate “‘the maintenance of self-esteem.” The first two functions are familiar ones, involving hedonism and cognitive organization.

People who “‘know themselves’’—that is, can accurately gauge their own capabilities and potential accomplishments—can make decisions that increase their outcomes from life. The third function, self-esteem maximization, has been assumed by most personality theorists to be a basic human motive (see Hall & Lindzey, 1978). Self-esteem is usually defined as an overall self-evaluation or judgment of personal worth (Wells & Marwell, 1976). People desire to think well of themselves, their attributes, and their actions. Some of the ways people go about doing so will be explored in the next chapter.

The Scientific Status of the Self-Concept

When the self-concept is seen as a self-theory, scientific objections to its status lose their force. The self-concept ‘‘can no longer be dismissed as unscientific, or as a reincarnation of the soul, unless one is also willing to dismiss theory, in general, as unscientific” (Epstein, 1973, p. 415).
Some people might argue that it is not necessary to talk of the self-concept. One could simply examine each of a person’s self-relevant facts, constructs, and beliefs in isolation. Yet, as all scientists know, no fact, construct, or hypothesis (belief) exists in isolation. Facts are given meaning by constructs, constructs are given meaning through their place in a theory, and no hypothesis can be tested in total isolation from the rest of the elements of a theory (see Hempel, 1966; Nagel, 1961).

People understand themselves and their place in the world through the integrated elements of their self-concepts and use the self-concept to facilitate functioning in social life.

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SOCIAL EXPERIENCE

Some people are offended by the suggestion that the self-concept arises in social interaction and is affected by what others think. They willingly admit that other people probably have had their self-concepts formed and affected this way, but—as for themselves—well, they are more independent than that. Such resistance is understandable. The self, the core of one’s being, is sometimes viewed as the last vestige of personal independence in a world that has become oriented toward others. Given this skepticism, it is worth examining some of the evidence that supports the basic hypotheses of symbolic interactionism. 

Early Social Interaction

According to symbolic interactionism, the self-concept arises from social experience. It follows that without social interaction any self-concept that exists will be extremely crude and one’s interpersonal relations will be hindered. The most direct way of testing such hypotheses would be to randomly assign newborn infants to either an enriched social interaction experience or a period of social deprivation. For obvious ethical reasons, one cannot conduct such a study with humans—I hope no one would want to. But such studies have been conducted with nonhumans.
Gordon Gallup (1977) reasoned that the self-concept rests on the fundamental ability to recognize and code oneself as a distinct personal entity. If an organism cannot recognize itself, it is difficult to argue that it can have a sense of self; if it does show self-recognition, the basis for a rudimentary self-concept would be present. Gallup investigated self-recognition in chimpanzees and other great apes. He concluded that the great apes do possess a rudimentary self-concept and that it is dramatically affected by social experience. In an initial study, he individually exposed preadolescent chimps to a full-length mirror to see how they would react. For the first two or three days, the chimps reacted to their mirror image as if it were another chimp, bobbing up and down, vocalizing at the reflection, and occasionally making threatening gestures. Later, the chimps began to show signs of self-recognition. They used the mirror to groom parts of their bodies that were outside their normal sight, entertained themselves by blowing bubbles and making faces, and even picked food from their teeth.

Despite these observations, skeptics might have been unconvinced of the chimps’ ability for self-recognition. So Gallup anesthetized each of the chimps and painted an odorless, nonirritating bright red dye on parts of their faces that they could not see without a mirror. Because of the anesthesia and the properties of the dye, the chimps would not be able to know that it had been applied unless they saw it in the mirror and knew that the image in the mirror was theirs. After awakening, the chimps were placed in their individual cages, without mirrors, and the researchers counted the number of times they spontaneously touched the dye-marked spots. The mirror was then reintroduced. It was found that, when the chimps could see themselves in the mirror, they touched the spots 25 times more frequently than when the mirror was absent.

The chimps spent more time looking into the mirror than they had before being marked with the red dye, and they attempted to smell and examine their fingers after touching the spots. This is convincing evidence for self-recognition in nonhumans. If self-concept development is dependent on social experience, as symbolic interactionists suppose, then chimps reared in isolation without the possibility of social interaction should have difficulty at the mirror recognition task. Gallup (Gallup, McClure, Hill, & Bundy, 1971) raised some chimps in isolation and compared their responses to chimps raised with companions. While the normal chimps seemed to recognize themselves in the mirror, the socially deprived chimps did not.

In another study (Hill, Bundy, Gallup, & McClure, 1970) two isolation-reared chimps who showed no signs of self-recognition were given three months of social experience by being housed in the same cage. In contrast to a chimp that continued in isolation, who remained unable to identify the reflection, the chimps given social experience showed signs of self-recognition ability. At least some of the effects of the social isolation were reversible. This is persuasive evidence of the necessity for social experience in the development of the self-concept.

With the importance of social interaction in mind, Gallup (1977) has speculated about what might happen if an organism capable of self-concept development were reared with members of another species, from whom the animal might learn unusual patterns of behavior and self-identification. Presumably, the animal might come to misidentify itself and see itself as a member of that other species. The data are certainly consistent with this possibility, although conclusive evidence has yet to be amassed. One chimp raised with humans and taught sign language referred to other chimps whom she had seen for the first time as “black bugs.” Vicki, another chimp raised in a home with humans, was taught to sort pictures into two piles—human and nonhuman. One day while Vicki was working on this task, her own picture was slipped in with the other photos. When she came to it, Vicki placed it in the pile with the humans!

The evidence from studies of the great apes clearly indicates the importance of social experience in the development of self-recognition ability (see also Meddin, 1979). The rudimentary self-concepts possessed by the great apes seem to require social interaction to develop fully. These results are consistent with correlational studies of humans that indicate that early social experience is a key to the later development of effective interaction patterns (see Mussen, Conger, & Kagan, 1969).

Similar experimental studies with nonhuman species indicate that both lack of mother contact and peer isolation produce later behavioral abnormalities (Harlow & Harlow, 1966; Harlow, Harlow, & Suomi, 1971). Social experience is of paramount importance in the development of a normal personality.

Reflected Appraisals

A major assumption of the symbolic-interactionist approach is that people’s self-concepts develop as they see themselves reflected in the actions of significant others. Even after the self-concept has formed, others’ self-directed actions still should influence what people think of themselves, at least under certain conditions. As Cooley (1902/1922) put it:

As we see our face, figure, and dress in the glass [mirror], and are in- terested in them because they are ours, and pleased or otherwise with them according as they do or do not answer to what we should like them to be; so in imagination we see in another’s mind some thought of our ap- pearance, manners, aims, deeds, character, friends, and so on, and are variously affected by it [p. 184].

A person’s perceptions of the impressions others form about him or her are termed reflected appraisals. Reflected appraisals can be based on explicit or implicit information. For example, Grandpa might bring over one of his friends to see his 3-year-old grandson and remark in the child’s presence “Look at that build—husky already. And you should see his grip. That boy’s gonna make a fine fullback some day; nobody will be able to tackle him.” Hearing the explicit evaluation, the child begins to form self- constructs such as strong and athletic. Implicit information can also be transformed into reflected appraisals. Tacit cues for reflected appraisals can derive from the attentions of others (Does Mother care about me, or does she seem to ignore me?); the tones of others’ voices (Is Mother calm or agitated when I’m around?); and the things they don’t say (Why doesn’t Mother ever say I’m pretty?).

Reflected appraisals do not always correspond perfectly with the actual evaluation another person attempts to convey. A person might misinterpret what another says, particularly if the comment is ambiguous to begin with, and believe that the self-evaluation was more or less favorable than the source intended (see Jacobs, Berscheid, & Walster, 1971). Moreover, explicit and implicit information can sometimes conflict, making it difficult to obtain a clear reflected appraisal. A mother might tell her daughter that she is darling and loved, while the child notices that her mother speaks in an affectionless tone, doesn’t look her in the eye, and never hugs her. Confusion can result, as the child has difficulty determining how her mother really feels. Messages may even flatly contradict each other, as when a mother asks her daughter to give her a hug, while her tone of voice clearly tells the daughter to stay away. Such contradictory messages can lead to disorganized behavior patterns later in life of the type exhibited by schizophrenics (Bateson, Jackson, Haley, & Weakland, 1956).

One's parents typically provide the first significant source of personal evaluation through reflected appraisals. One dramatic example of how the reflected appraisals of parents can affect one’s self-concept is the story of the boyhood of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), the British philosopher who made important contributions to psychology, sociology, and economics. James Mill, John’s father, was a disciplinarian who structured the boy’s education and development strictly. John learned Greek by the age of 3; by 7 he had read Plato, Herodotus, and Xenophon and had begun the study of Latin. By 12 he had finished Virgil, Ovid, Aristotle, Socrates, and Aristophanes; was expert in geometry, algebra, and calculus; had written a Roman history and a history of Holland; and had edited his father’s history of India (Heilbroner, 1967). His father’s demands were constant. There were no vacations, no play with peers, no ‘‘pleasure’’ reading. James kept up a constant barrage of tests for his son. Even while riding, the boy was forced to memorize signs and aspects of the countryside, on which his father would quiz him later to improve his memory. Through all this, John had no idea that his upbringing was unusual or that he was particularly gifted; his self-evaluations were provided by his father, who treated his ac- complishments as unremarkable (Tedeschi & Lindskold, 1976). Only later, when he compared himself with others, did he come to recognize his uniqueness.

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ROLES: THE PARTS WE PLAY

People come to define themselves through social interaction, seeing themselves in part through the eyes of significant others. One of the factors that affect how other people see us and act toward us is the roles we occupy. Some, like the male or female role, we are born into; others are the result of our personal efforts and abilities or lack of them— doctor, lawyer, psychologist. In either case, roles exist apart from the particular individuals who occupy them and can act as social scripts that dictate how we should act.

The word role derives from the Latin word rotula, the sheet of parchment wrapped around a wooden roller that contained the part that an actor recited on stage. In the theater, roles constrain actors’ behavior, at least to some degree. Actors must say certain lines at certain times, engage in specific behaviors at specific moments, work with particular props, coordinate their actions with those of other actors, and, in general, convey to the audience the character of the person they are playing. Within these constraints, of course, actors are free to display their own unique talents, fleshing out the character to give spontaneity and life to the author’s words. They might ad-lib on occasion, throwing in or changing lines and dramatizing gestures to bring the character home and touch a responsive chord in the audience. Typically, the better the actor, the better his or her ability to improvise in a way that meets with the audience’s approval. But the role still gives direction and purpose to the actor’s behaviors, guiding them along a predetermined course.

Role Theory

Role theorists have taken this model and applied it to everyday social behavior. Role theory (see Biddle & Thomas, 1966; Merton, 1957; Sarbin & Allen, 1968; E. J. Thomas, 1968) is a prominent area of study that has been greatly influenced by symbolic interactionism and the dramaturgical approach’ Just as actors’ behaviors are guided by their roles, people’s social behaviors are shaped by the roles they occupy. A role is usually defined in terms of the part an individual plays within a group. Possible roles are numerous: doctor, lawyer, banker, politician, parent, teacher, son, daughter, construction worker, female, male.

Each role carries with it certain perceived and expected behaviors that role occupants enact in social situations. The perceived attributes are easily demonstrated by the stereotypes most people associate with certain roles. Everyone can characterize what a ‘‘traditional woman,” or “homemaker,” is supposed to be like. She should be dedicated to her family, be oriented toward the home rather than a professional career, and be submissive, affectionate, emotional, and skilled at cooking, cleaning, sewing, and so on. To facilitate the adoption of this role, young girls were and often still are cuddled and encouraged to express emotion, given doll sets so that they could gain the “proper” perspective through play, taught how to cook and sew, discouraged from expressing dominant or aggressive behaviors, and so on. Young boys often receive quite different training to encourage behavior patterns that are relevant to the "male" role in society. The expected behaviors that roles carry with them, then, are based on social agreement about what the occupants of certain roles should be like; society encourages and rewards proper role enactment and discourages out-of-role behaviors. People’s cognitive scripts for social interactions are based in part on shared beliefs about such role requirements.

The stereotypical attributes associated with particular roles often emerge because of their usefulness to society. For example, bankers would quickly go out of business if they were perceived as unstable, untrustworthy, risk oriented, and poor at mathematics. Hence, stereotypes of bankers include such attributes as conservative, cautious, stable, precise, and good with figures. Society and bankers both benefit if a person with these characteristics takes such a job, or if the person acquires these characteristics quickly after.

Everyone has many roles. A person might be a wife, mother, daughter, teacher, professor, scientist, athlete, and many other things. On occasion the demands of roles may conflict, as in the case of a professor who has her own husband enrolled in a course or the college student who returns home for the holidays to find that his newly acquired independence is not appreciated by his parents. People often shift from one role to another within a brief time. A university faculty member might adopt a “‘professor’’ role while at work, maintaining an intellectual aura and seeming emotionally aloof. After work, the professor might shift into a “parent role,” shed the dignity that was so carefully cultivated during the day, and gleefully crawl around on all fours with the children. Occasionally people have difficulty shifting out of roles at appropriate times, as when a lawyer greets his or her spouse after work in the tone of voice usually reserved for the jury.

Roles and the Self-Concept

The cumulative impact of one’s roles can influence the self-concept and behavior. People typically come to view themselves in terms of the attributes and behavior patterns dictated by their roles (see Kuhn, 1960; Sarbin & Allen, 1968). The roles become internalized as part of the self-concept, providing people with role-related self-constructs and expectations: ‘A banker should be categorized as conservative and stable.” I should behave in a certain way, and others should treat me in a certain way.” Through role enactment, people can “become” the roles they play. In a statement quite reminiscent of William James’ discussion of habits (see Chapter 2), Waller (1932) noted:

That stiff and formal manner in which the young teacher compresses himself every morning when he puts on his collar becomes ... a plaster cast which at length he cannot loosen. ... The didactic manner, the authoritative manner, the flat, assured tones of voice that go with them, are bred in the teacher by his dealings in the classroom... and these traits are carried  over by the teacher into his interpersonal relations [pp. 381-382].

The internalization of a role seems to be greatest when people become ‘‘comfortable” in it, when they come to value the benefits that the role supplies and to believe that they can fulfill the role- expectations. An army draftee might initially hate the army and do everything he can to avoid being type-cast as a military man. Of course, his sergeant doesn’t take kindly to disobedience or a non-military manner, so he forces the recruit to ‘“shape up.’”’ Soon, the young man begins to reap some rewards from his new role. Not only does he escape punishment, but he gets passes to leave the base and finds that the young women in town just adore men in uniform. He then begins to consider all the benefits of army life—free room and board, comrade-ship, educational opportunities, and even the thought that he is serving his country. He also finds that it is not so hard to fit the army role; he scores well on marksmanship tests and learns new tasks easily. He soon becomes gung ho military.

Of course, if people don’t come to value the benefits of the role, or they believe that they can’t fulfill its requirements, problems develop. The person is not likely to internalize the role but in many cases tries to escape from its constraints, by leaving the job, for example. It has been found that, when self characteristics are incongruent with the requirements of the role, “role enactment will be poor in terms of appropriateness, effectiveness, and convincingness”’ (Allen, 1968, p. 205). Such failure further reinforces the belief that one can’t play that role. If one’s self-constructs and self-efficacy expectations contradict role requirements, escape from the role rather than internalization becomes more likely (see Sarbin & Allen, 1968; E. J. Thomas, 1968).

In sum, roles provide scripts of how we are expected to behave, and these scripts influence our behaviors. Roles thus partially define the identities we establish in social interactions and can influence our self-concepts. In turn, our self-concepts can affect the quality of role enactment and thus affect the degree to which we internalize any aspects of roles that might initially be discrepant with our self-concepts.

Basking in Reflected Glory

 Value of Desired Goals

 Most theories of motivation assert that motivation increases as a function of the value or importance of desired goals (Beck, 1983). I’m sure it doesn’t surprise you that people are more motivated to try to attain things that they view as valuable in one sense or another. This is also true of impression-motivation. Given that people think their impressions are relevant to the attainment of certain goals, they will be more motivated to impression-manage the more valuable or important the goal they wish to attain. Several factors affect the value of people’s goals. 

Availability of Resources

 In economic systems, the value of something typically increases as it becomes more scarce, and a similar principle operates in social life. As a result, impression motivation is higher when resources are scarce. You can see this easily if you imagine being interviewed for a job; in which case would you be most concerned about the impressions you make—a job for which only one other applicant was being interviewed or one for which the company was interviewing 15 people? A study by Pandey and Rastagi (1979) showed that people were more likely to ingratiate a job interviewer as competition for the job became more fierce. Similarly, I suspect that impression management to potential romantic partners increases as the pool of potential partners gets smaller. 

Characteristics of the Target

 If you’re like most people, you are probably more likely to impression manage when dealing with people who possess desirable characteristics, and this seems to be true of virtually any characteristic you might imagine. Who are you most likely to want to impress: An attractive person or an unattractive one? A person who is intelligent and competent, or one who is not very bright? A socially skilled person or a socially inept one? Someone who is likable or unlikable? Those of high status or those of low status? An individual with a pleasing personality or an individual with the personality of a planaria? Studies show that people are more likely to manage their impressions when interacting with those who are physically attractive or otherwise socially desirable (Forsyth, Riess, & Schlenker, 1977; Mori et al., 1987; Shaw & Wagner, 1975; Zanna & Pack, 1975). 

 This may be because we value the reactions of people with desirable characteristics more highly than those of less desirable people; put simply, their reactions are more valuable. For one thing, we often assume that attractive, powerful, competent, and high status people are harder to impress. Thus, when we do make a desired impression and receive affirming feedback, we feel better about it. 

 In addition, people with socially desirable attributes are often in the position to mediate important outcomes that we desire. Overall, bright, attractive, skilled, and personable people are more likely to be in positions of power and authority than stupid, unattractive, unskilled, and unpersonable ones. 

The Value of Approval

 Given that people often impression-manage to enhance others’ evaluations of them and to get social approval, we would expect people who particularly need approval or fear disapproval from others to be more motivated to manage their impressions. Because people who have recently suffered a blow to either their self-esteem or to their esteem in others’ eyes value approval more highly, failure, rejection, and embarrassment increase people’s desire for social approval and, thus, their motive to impression manage (Miller & Leary, 1992). In some cases, a person who has been publicly embarrassed in front of one person may be motivated to convey a particularly positive impression in front of someone else (Apsler, 1975). 

Although our need for approval varies across situations, some people are characteristically more concerned about receiving approval and avoiding disapproval. People who score high in fear of negative evaluation worry more about others’ evaluations of them, score higher on measures of approval-seeking, and are more concerned about making good impressions on others (Gregorich, Kemple, & Leary, 1986; Leary, 1980, 1983a; Leary, Barnes, & Griebel, 1986; Watson & Friend, 1969). Similarly, people who score high in need for approval (Crowne & Marlowe, 1964; Paulhus, 1984, 1991) are generally more motivated to control how others see them than people who are low on this trait (Dies, 1970; Jones & Tager, 1972; Leary, 1983c; Millham & Kellogg, 1980; Schneider & Turkat, 1975). 

 People who are high in fear of negative evaluation and need for approva1 tend to have higher impression motivation because they value approval more highly than people who are low on these dimensions. Because they value it more highly, they are more motivated to behave in ways that will gain approval and avoid disapproval, including self-presentation. People high in fear of negative evaluation, for example, work harder on tasks when they believe that hard work will gain them explicit approval (Watson & Friend, 1969). They also are more likely than lows to offer excuses when the possibility of negative evaluation exists (Leary et al., 1986). 

Discrepancy between Desired and Current Image

 The third factor that motivates self-presentation involves the degree of discrepancy that exists between the image one would like others to have of oneself (the desired image) and the image that others appear to hold (the current image). As long as people think they are making the kind of impression they want to make, impression-motivation should be minimal. However, to the degree that people become aware that others are not forming the impressions of them they would like, they will be motivated to manage their impressions to convey the desired images. 

 As a result, people who have made undesired impressions are particularly motivated to impression-manage. In some experiments, subjects have been led to think they failed on an important task or have been embarrassed in front of others. Both failure and embarrassment increase impression-motivation as people try to repair the damage they sustained to their social images (Apsler, 1975; Baumeister & Jones, 1978; Baumgardner, Lake, & Arkin, 1985; Brown, 1968, 1970; Brown & Garland, 1971; Leary & Schlenker, 1980; Modigliani, 1971; Schlenker, 1975; Schneider, 1969). 

 People who perceive a discrepancy between their desired and current images use a variety of self-presentational tactics in their attempts to reduce the discrepancy. For example, they may stress other positive attributes (Baumeister & Jones, 1978; Schneider, 1969) or make self-serving attributions for the events that damaged their images to begin with (Baumgardner et al., 1985; Frey, 1978; Weary & Arkin, 1981). They are also more likely to do favors for others to show what nice people they are (Apsler, 1975) and to associate themselves with other successful people (Cialdini & Richardson, 1980), hoping to “bask in reflected glory.” 

Nonconscious Self-Presentation

 People are not always aware of their motives for doing things. Although we can usually give reasons why we did this or that, the reasons we give may or may not reflect the true causes of our behavior (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977). As a result, people’s behaviors are sometimes affected by self-presentational motives even though they are not consciously thinking about others’ impressions at the time and even though they may that entered into their behavior at all. 

 First, some self-presentational behaviors are performed so regularly that they become mindless habits. Although the behavior may have begun because the person consciously wanted to create a certain impression, the person now performs the behavior without consciously thinking about its self-presentational roots. For example, why do you comb your hair? Obviously, there is little reason rather than to make a better impression on other people. Yet, I doubt that you consciously think, “I’d better comb my hair so I’ll look okay today.” Similarly, we are so used to conveying positive, socially desirable impressions of ourselves that we often do so mindlessly, without consciously thinking about our self-presentational goals in doing so. 

 A second reason that people sometimes engage in self-presentational behaviors nonconsciously is that they are simply not consciously aware of the stimuli that are causing their behaviors. One experiment showed that how a subject presented himself or herself to a conversation partner clearly depended on how the conversation partner presented him- or herself: subjects who interacted with self-enhancing partners presented themselves more positively than subjects who interacted with modest partners. Yet, subjects seemed completely unaware that their own self-presentations had been influenced by those of their partners. In fact, subjects insisted that they would have presented themselves the same way in other situations as they did during the study. They seemed unaware of deliberately or strategically changing their self-presentations (Baumeister, Tice, & Hutton, 1989). Thus, people sometimes engage in self-presentational behaviors without being aware of doing so. 

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Basking in Reflected Glory

 People want to be associated with those who are successful, powerful, attractive, popular, or otherwise esteemed in others’ eyes. By connecting themselves with those whom others admire, they can bask in reflected glory (BIRG). Sometimes, people tout their associations with noted others verbally, such as when they “drop names” or tell about their connections to movie stars, historical figures, or other famous people. Sometimes the linkages are quite loose, such as when a person recounts seeing a rock star on a New York City street or brags that a sports hero was born in his or her hometown. 

 At other times, people connect themselves to others symbolically. One common way in which people bask in reflected glory involves high-lighting their connection to successful athletic teams. By wearing team-identifying apparel, fans can associate themselves with successful teams. Of course, people wear team shirts and jackets for many different reasons. Yet, research shows that university students are more likely to wear apparel that identifies their school after the football team has won a game than after the team has lost. Furthermore, the larger the margin of victory, the more students are likely to wear school-identifying apparel (Cialdini, Borden, Thorne, Walker, Freeman, & Sloan, 1976). 

 Experimental research shows that people are more likely to tout their connections to successful others when their own public images have been threatened, and those others are successful in an area in which they themselves are deficient. They are far less likely to mention their connections to those who are deficient on the same dimensions as themselves (Cialdini et al., 1976; Cialdini & DeNicholas, 1989). 

 People also do the opposite of basking in reflected glory–they cut off reflected failure (CORF) by disassociating themselves from people of disrepute, particularly when the disreputable person’s reactions may reflect personally on them (Snyder, Higgins, & Stucky, 1983; Snyder, Lassegard, & Ford, 1986). My grandfather is the family genealogist, but I’ve always suspected that he only tells us about ancestors who were notable in some way; I have yet to hear about a single horse thief, murderer, or other reprobate in my family tree. Another common example of CORFing occurs after political elections. People who display candidates’ signs in their yards are more likely to take the sign down if the candidate they support loses the election than if their candidate wins (Bernhardt, 1993). Few people want to be publicly associated with a loser. 

 In an extreme case of CORFing, Giovanna Portapuglia, an Italian countess, was kept locked up in a room not much larger than a broom closet for nearly 50 years because her family wanted to preserve the family’s honor and dignity in the eyes of other people. When she was discovered by police in 1980, the 65-year-old woman was emaciated, mute, and mentally disturbed. The family decided to hide her from public view after an illness she had as a teenager left her “different” (“Countess was Chained,” 1980). 

BIRGing at the State and City Level

 People sometimes bask in reflected glory simply by mentioning that a famous person was born in, lived in, or was otherwise associated with their town. Occasionally, entire cities or states get in on the action as they try to bask in the reflected glory of their native sons and daughters. Most commonly, states and cities advertise the fact that a prominent person was born there–even though where famous people were born may have little to do with what they ultimately achieve. 

 I read recently that North and South Carolina have been arguing for over a century about whether Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, was born in their state. Jackson was born a few days after his mother left her home in North Carolina for her brother’s plantation in South Carolina, but experts disagree about precisely where she was when Andrew was bom. South Carolina claims that she made it to her brother’s home before the baby was bom, but North Carolina offers evidence that Andrew was born along the way in another uncle’s cabin in North Carolina The fact that North Carolina has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to strengthen its claim that Jackson was born there attests to the importance to the state’s image of being associated with a U.S. President (“Native Son?,” 1991). 

 Although both individuals and entities such as states and cities BIRG, there seems to be one difference. Individuals sometimes BIRG with well-known people regardless of whether the reason the person is well-known is for being good or bad. We seem to take nearly as much pleasure in telling others that a mass murderer lived on our street as a sports hero. In contrast, cities and states only advertise their connections with those whose claim to fame is socially desirable. For example, I doubt that New Orleans will ever erect a sign at the city limits proclaiming “Birthplace of Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Self-Presentation

 Impression Management and Interpersonal Behavior 

 Mark R. Leary

The mind’s defenses—like the body’s immune mechanisms—protect us by providing a variety of illusions to filter pain and to allow self-soothing

 Introduction

The mind is its own place, and in itself

 Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.

John Milton, Paradise Lost

Our lives are at times intolerable. At times we cannot bear reality. At such times our minds play tricks on us. Our minds distort inner and outer reality so that an observer might accuse us of denial, self-deception, even dishonesty. But such mental defenses creatively rearrange the sources of our conflict so that they become manageable and we may survive. The mind’s defenses—like the body’s immune mechanisms—protect us by providing a variety of illusions to filter pain and to allow self-soothing.

Often such emotional and intellectual dishonesty is not only healthy but also mature and creative. Such defensive self-deception reflects the ego’s—the integrated brain’s—best synthetic effort at coping with life events that otherwise would be overwhelming. Equally important, such self-deception evolves throughout our lives. Our development does not end with childhood but continues through adulthood. The maladaptive defenses of adolescence can evolve into the virtues of maturity. This psychic alchemy helps to explain the resilience of individuals who are abused and disadvantaged during the first decades of life and yet become valued and useful adults. In short, our ego’s defenses can be creative, healthy, comforting, and coping. Yet when we are observers—rather than users—of defenses, they often strike us as downright peculiar.

Sixty years ago the physiologist Walter B. Cannon wrote a landmark book, The Wisdom of the Body, in which he described the invisible response of the human digestive tract to distress.1 He clearly identified the checks and balances employed by our bodies’ parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems to maintain homeostasis—the term he used to describe a body at peace with itself. In his research Cannon capitalized on what was then a recent invention, X-ray photography, to monitor hitherto invisible physiological processes. Echoing Cannon, I have called this book The Wisdom of the Ego, because I believe the invisible responses of the human mind to distress—the defenses deployed by the ego—are as healing, and as necessary to health, as the autonomic nervous system that he did so much to elucidate.

Like Cannon, I capitalize on a recent scientific advance—in my case the availability of records of prospectively gathered human lives. I draw my evidence from the Study of Adult Development, in which large numbers of people have been followed from adolescence through their adult fives. Such prolonged study helps to render visible the healing power of the ego’s defenses. In addition, the rich database of hundreds of lives provides statistical support for generalizations made from individual fives. Because one question of interest is the relationship of the ego’s adaptive self-deceptions to human creativity, I also examine the life histories of several creative artists.

In this book, then, I weave together three threads. One thread is the mind’s—the ego’s—modes of self-deception and denial, sometimes referred to as mechanisms of defense. To use a Piagetian term, the deployment of such defenses reflects our adult efforts to accommodate to life. The use of ego mechanisms of defense alters the perception of both internal and external reality; and often, like hypnosis, use of defenses compromises other facets of cognition. Awareness of instinctual wishes may be greatly diminished; antithetical wishes may be passionately adhered to; our consciences or our awareness of other people may be obliterated. I shall offer evidence that a person’s choice of defenses is critical to mental health.

The second thread is an examination of creativity—the peculiarly human capacity for putting in the world what was not there before. Such a capacity for creativity seems closely interwoven with the alchemy of the ego to bring order and meaning out of chaos and distress. Such creative capacity can allow grief to be mitigated by an esoteric hobby, and it can allow self-deception to be viewed as a virtue rather than a sin. In Piagetian terminology, creativity reflects how we assimilate life, take life in, make it our own, and share it with others. Creativity is how we experience life and pour it forth.

The book’s third thread is the unfolding of adult development. The study of lifetimes allows reexamination of cross-sectional views of adult development. Such study permits us to see how people bud and flower, and how human caterpillars evolve into butterflies. It allows us to trace how the capacity for intimacy makes possible the commitment essential for a gratifying career identity, and how such fulfillment from a career makes possible a capacity for generative care. It also allows us to see that this developmental sequence of love-to-work-to-care appears to hold for both men and women.

More important, prospective study of lifetimes demonstrates the resilience and the continuing maturation of adults. Freud diminished human hope by suggesting that the first five years of life were destiny. The evidence I adduce in this book restores hope. The data from the Study of Adult Development demonstrate that mental health and choice of defense are not static. Rather, choice of defense may evolve throughout adult life and may transmute irritating grains of sand into pearls. Nor is choice of defense determined by social class, education, or gender.

The modem psychoanalytic use of the term ego encompasses the adaptive and executive aspects of the human brain: the ability of the mind to integrate, master, and make sense of inner and outer reality. Or, in Freud’s words, “We have formed the idea that in each individual there is a coherent organization of mental processes; and we call this his ego.”2 The term ego addresses the capacity of the integrated mind to accommodate and assimilate the world.

On the one hand, personality development and maturity occur through the interaction between the person and his or her social environment. On the other hand, as John Milton reminds us, experience is not what happens to the mind (and heart) but what the mind (and heart) does with experience. How the mind manipulates experience is at the core of ego development.

We are accustomed to thinking of ego development as something that occurs in childhood. The developmental psychologist Robert Kegan has described watching the ego development of a young child as follows: “Being in another’s presence while she so honestly labors at an astonishingly intimate activity—the activity of making sense—is somehow very touching.” Such development, as Kegan notes, is social: “Our survival and development depend on our capacity to recruit the invested attention of others to us.”3 To develop, a child needs a loving caretaker, one who creates for the child what D. W. Winnicott has called a “holding environment”—that is, an environment that provides the child with the secure foundation it needs to mature and to develop a sense of self. Eventually, the caretaker’s love comes to dwell inside the child, where it supports the capacity of the ego’s self-deceptions to turn life’s leaden moments into gold, as it were, instead of into self-detrimental distortions and illusions.

But this book is not about children. Although Kegan expresses a fear that adolescents and adults less frequently “display themselves in these touching and elemental ways,” he realizes it may only be that in adults “we are less able to see these ways for what they are.”4 This book is about adults who have exposed their entire lives to scrutiny and have been seen in similarly vulnerable and intimate activities. This book is about middle-aged men and women wrestling with learning how to love, with making meaning, with reordering chaos, and with discovering, often inadvertently, how to put in the world what was not there before. Their life stories offer example after example in which maturation and the internalization of a holding environment occur in adulthood, not in childhood.

Finally, quite unashamedly, I wish to argue for preserving the baby of psychoanalysis even as we discard its bath water. I wish to remind the reader that we have limbic systems as well as cerebral cortices, and that the brain cannot be separated from the heart. This book is an effort to undo some of the excesses of the so-called cognitive revolution, of the medicalization of psychiatry, and of what has been called the “decade of the brain.” Howard Gardner, in his lucid history of the cognitive revolution, notes the deliberate decision of cognitive scientists to exclude certain factors that “would unnecessarily complicate the cognitive-scientific enterprise. These factors include the influence of affective factors or emotions, the contribution of historical and cultural factors, and the role of the background context in which particular actions or thoughts occur.”5The Wisdom of the Ego reflects my studied effort to recomplicate such an enterprise.

The prospective study of human lives makes it possible to look closely at psychological experiences and to trace their similarities and differences in large groups of men and women. In the words of the psychiatrist John Nemiah, “The difficulty many people have in accepting the validity of psychodynamic concepts lies not in their lack of a cognitive ability to understand the theory, but in their incapacity or unwillingness to observe the clinical facts on which the theory is based.

Those who reject psychodynamic theory refuse to take subjective human psychological experiences as phenomena worthy of serious attention and study, and consequently they cannot or will not allow themselves to observe them.”6 This book, using data from the prospective, long-term study of many lives, renders those subjective, human psychological experiences visible to even the most intransigent empiricist.

Throughout the book, I will point out the distortions that occur between the actual and the remembered past, between the artist’s life and her creative product, and between current reality and our perceptions of it. My intent will be to make the hidden visible, and to retrieve the dynamic “unconscious” first popularized by Freud and Janet from the parochial grip of the “Freudian” humanists so that it can be reinserted into the grasp of natural scientists. It is time for the ego and its defenses to be seen as facets of psychobiological reality, not as articles of psychoanalytic faith.

Notes

1  W. B. Cannon, The Wisdom of the Body (New York: Norton, 1932).

2  S. Freud, The Ego and the Id (1923), in Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (hereinafter abbreviated SE), ed. and trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1953-1964), 24 vols., 19:17.

3  R. Kegan, The Evolving Self (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 16, 17.

4 Ibid., p. 17. 

5 H. Gardner, The Mind’s New Science (New York: Basic Books, 1985), p. 6. 

6 J. Nemiah, “Reflections of an Aging Educator: A Tale of Two Residents” (Teacher of the Year Award Address presented to the Association of Academic Psychiatry, Seattle, 1990).

**

Academic psychology, however, retains a mistrust of the unconscious in general and of defense mechanisms in particular. The “cognitive revolution” has ignored defenses, and only recently has modern experimental psychology been groping to reinvent a language for regulatory self-deceptions. The reasons for such mistrust stem both from the rigorous, if sometimes limiting, empiricism of academic psychology and from the often self-serving excuses given by psychoanalysis for ignoring empiricism.

In many respects the mistrust of defense mechanisms is unwarranted. Modern experimental psychologists often forget that Freud, too, began life as a scientific empiricist. Many modern psychologists try to study personality as if trying to understand operas by just reading the libretto. Freud insisted that we attend to the music as well. The metaphors of John Keats, Guiseppe Verdi, or William Shakespeare are simply better equipped than the literal-minded prose of Immanuel Kant or B. F. Skinner to describe the scientific realities of a colorful sunset or the pain of a broken heart. Freud reaffirmed that humans are the guardians of forces they cannot see or perfectly control. Modern investigation of the hypothalamus and the limbic system has left the central importance of these forces unquestioned. The good news is that psychologists have recently begun to rediscover defense mechanisms. But their terminology differs from mine: they try to operationalize defenses as “self-deceptions,” “comforting denial,” and “cognitive regulatory mechanisms.”

At the same time, in many respects the mistrust of defense mechanisms is entirely warranted. In conceptualizing defenses, Freud made many errors. At first he saw defenses as only pathological. To be fully analyzed supposedly meant to give up defenses. Thus, Freud did not always appreciate that defenses were homeostatic and could help even the most psychologically healthy adult keep from being immobilized by anxiety and depression. Second, he erroneously believed that all pathogenic defenses had their roots in childhood. In addition, because of events in his own life and historical epoch, Freud saw defenses as too exclusively related to sexual conflict; he ignored their equally important role in regulating aggression, grief, dependency, tenderness, and joy. Finally, having studied people in the solitude of the consulting room, Freud ignored the role of ego defenses in modulating relationships. He placed too much emphasis on a psychology of drives and too little on a psychology of relationships.

The Wisdom of the Ego

George E. Vaillant

A Brief History of Self-Presentation Research

 As a student, I cringed whenever the author of a book launched into a discussion of the history of his or her topic. But I see now that understanding something about the development of an area helps us understand the area itself—its emphases, biases, controversies, blind spots, and so on. So, please bear with me. I’ll make this history as brief and as painless as possible. 

 Interest in self-presentation emerged somewhat independently at about the same time in psychology and sociology. Although it may seem that sociologists and psychologists (especially social psychologists) would have many things in common, connections between the disciplines have traditionally been weak, and sociologists and psychologists have typically relied little on each other’s work. However, researchers interested in self-presentation would find it nearly impossible to carry out their work without relying on concepts, theories, and research from both sociology and psychology. 

Goffman and the Sociological Approach

 The systematic study of self-presentation began with the work of sociologist Erving Goffman. Although he wrote many essays relevant to the study of human interaction, Goffman’s major contribution was The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, published in 1959. Goffman’s basic premise was that many of the most revealing insights about social behavior are to be found not in analyzing people’s inner motives or personalities, but in studying the surface appearances people create for one another. Whereas psychologists often look beyond people’s overt behavior to understand their “true” underlying motives and characteristics, Goffman insisted that much can be gained by focusing on public behavior. 

In the course of social life, people’s responses to one another are heavily based on these surface appearances. Contrary to the advice we receive, we do judge books (and people) by their covers. And, because of this, people often present images of themselves that affect others’ judgments and reactions. According to Goff nan, a full understanding of human behavior requires that we pay attention to these public images. His view was consistent with Cooley’s (1902) claim that “the imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society” (p. 87).  For Goffman, people control how other people treat them by influencing others’ definition of the situation. They influence others’ definition of the situation by giving others the kind of impression that will lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with their objectives. “Thus, when an individual appears in the presence of others, there will usually be some reason for him to mobilize his activity so that it will convey an impression to others which it is in his interests to convey” (Goffman, 1959, p. 4). 

 According to Goffman, self-presentation is not only functional for the individual, but it is essential for smooth interaction. Effective social interaction requires that the interactants know a little about one another—about one another’s socioeconomic status, attitudes, trustworthiness, competence, and so on. Yet, interactants often find it difficult to learn much about other people. Here’s where self-presentation helps. The public images people convey give other interactants some idea of how they expect to be treated and how they should expect to treat others. 

 Goffman seemed particularly interested in what happens when self-presentation goes awry. When the impressions people project are contradicted or discredited, the interaction is disrupted. In fact, the interaction often grinds to a halt until the person’s public image is successfully restored (Goffman, 1955, 1959, 1967). Goffman wrote extensively about embarrassment and face-work, topics we explore in later chapters. 

 Goffman has been associated with what is known as the “dramaturgical approach” because he made great use of metaphors of the theater, complete with acts, roles, props, audiences, and backstage areas. However, nowhere in his writings does Goffman argue that life is nothing but a stage or that men and women are merely actors. Rather, he used the idea of life as drama as an analogy or metaphor to elucidate certain facts about social life (Brissett & Edgley, 1990). 

 Goffman’s work was more akin to social anthropology than sociology (indeed, his Master’s degree was in anthropology). His articles and books were essentially anthropological descriptions of everyday interactions in Western society. Rather than recording the habits of the natives in some far-off land, he watched the interactions of people in the British Isles and United States. Goffman was an astute observer of human behavior with the ability to see processes of social life in new ways and to describe them in an engaging fashion. 

Jones and Social Psychology

 At about the same time Goffman published The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Edward Jones, a social psychologist, began a program of work on flattery. At the time, Jones was unfamiliar with Goffman’s work but became involved with self-presentation because of his interest in how people figure out what other people are like. Jones realized that our perceptions of other people are determined in part by their attempts to convey particular impressions of themselves. As Jones (1990) put it, “the study of impression management and self-presentation is an integral part of the study of interpersonal perception. We cannot understand how people perceive each other without at the same time understanding the dynamics of self-presentation” (p. 170). Thus, from early work on how people ingratiate themselves to others (Jones, 1964; Jones & Wortman, 1973), Jones moved on to study many facets of the self-presentation process. 

 Jones’ approach to research on self-presentation was quite different from Goffman’s. Whereas Goffman reported what were essentially anthropological field observations in narrative essays, Jones and his students designed laboratory experiments to investigate specific factors that affect self-presentation. Goffman tried to persuade his readers of his insights through observations and anecdotes, whereas Jones tried to confirm and disconfirm particular theoretical ideas through controlled experimentation. 

 Jones’ contribution to the study of self-presentation cannot be overestimated. Not only did he produce a wealth of empirical studies on the topic and offered important theoretical advances, but he trained several social psychologists who went on to make contributions to the area of self-presentation in their own right. We’ll encounter the contributions of Jones and his students throughout this book. 

Resistance to Self-Presentation

 From the beginning, some social psychologists, as well as many lay people, were extremely interested in self-presentation. Many realized that a great deal of social behavior is affected by people’s concerns with others’ impressions of them. However, self-presentation did not begin to emerge as a mainline area of interest among behavioral researchers for many years, and some researchers initially displayed outright resistance to self-presentational approaches. Jones noted that, when he first became interested in self-presentation in the early 1960s, some of his colleagues seemed to feel that he had entered a domain of investigation that was “as unsettling and almost as disreputable as parapsychology” (personal communication, March 17, 1992). One manifestation of this disinterest in self-presentation was that, until recently, it was difficult to find the terms “self-presentation” or “impression management” in the indexes of most textbooks on social psychology. 

 The reasons for this resistance to the topic are not entirely clear, particularly when one considers how much of human behavior is affected by self-presentational motives. I recently asked four of the most productive researchers in the area of self-presentation—Edward Jones, James Tedeschi, Barry Schlenker, and Roy Baumeister—why they thought self-presentation had remained on the periphery of social psychology for so long. They offered four basic explanations. 

 Part of the resistance may have come from the fact that many psychologists initially viewed self-presentation as inherently manipulative and deceptive, the ugly underbelly of interpersonal life. As we have seen, self-presentation is not necessarily inauthentic, but this view may have led some to regard the topic as unsavory or unnecessarily narrow (see, for example, Buss & Briggs, 1984). 

 Furthermore, during the past 20 years, social psychology has been dominated by an interest in cognitive processes—attribution, person perception, social cognition, and the like—and motivational processes have taken a back seat. Because the study of self-presentation focused on people’s interpersonal motives, it attracted less attention than certain other topics. 

 Third, during the 1970s, some researchers became frustrated by the fact that self-presentation theorists offered impression management as an alternative to accepted explanations of many interpersonal phenomena. It seemed to some that the self-presentation perspective could explain almost anything. Punching holes in a lot of other people’s theoretical balloons didn’t win the self-presentational perspective many allies. As Baumeister (1986) colorfully described it: 

Many psychologists had spent their lives and staked their careers on theories about inner motives. They were less than delighted to be told that their theories were egregiously mistaken, that they had overlooked a (or even the) main cause. They could not dismiss self-presentation, but they did not have to like it. Self-presentation grew up as an all-purpose alternative explanation for many other theories. It was greeted and treated like a rude bastard relative at a family gathering (p. vi). 

 Finally, although researchers interested in the topic approached self-presentation scientifically, discussion of self-presentational strategies often sounded too much like the how-to-manipulate-others vein of “pop psychology.” Many viewed impression management as an inherently applied topic more appropriately studied by politicians, advertisers, and business executives than by psychologists. 

Interest in Self-Presentation Spreads

 Over time, however, interest in self-presentation became more widespread. Initially, research focused primarily on identifying factors that affect the kinds of impressions people try to convey. In early studies, researchers studied variables such as the effects of status, interpersonal goals, expected interaction, other people’s evaluations, and social feedback on people’s self-presentations. Soon afterwards, however, researchers began to apply self-presentational perspectives to the study of other psychological phenomena, thereby demonstrating that a great deal of behavior is affected by people’s concerns with what other people think of them. One of the first examples of the application of self-presentational concepts to other areas examined how hospitalised schizophrenics manage their impressions to appear either more or less mentally disturbed depending on the immediate social context (Braginsky, Braginsky, & Ring, 1969); we’ll examine this fascinating line of work in detail in Chapter 6. 

 During the 1970s, researchers began to offer self-presentational explanations of many behaviors. For example, James Tedeschi and his students proposed that many behaviors that were originally explained as reactions to cognitive dissonance may actually reflect self-presentational strategies (Tedeschi, Schlenker, & Bonoma, 1971). Self-presentational perspectives were also applied to understanding aspects of aggression, helping, conformity, attribution, resource allocation, group decision-making processes, task performance, voting, exercise behavior, and leadership. More recently, self-presentational explanations have also been offered for an array of emotional and behavioral problems such as social anxiety, shyness, depression, hypochondriasis, anorexia, and underachievement. With the application of self-presentational perspectives to the study of psychological problems, interest in self-presentation spread into clinical and counseling psychology (Leary & Miller, 1986). 

 Over time, evidence for the viability of self-presentational explanations accumulated. Study after study showed that behavior was affected by people’s desires for others to perceive them in particular ways. Furthermore, such findings were obtained for a wide variety of behaviors that spanned much of the content not only of social psychology, but of other areas of psychology as well. By the mid-1980s, it was difficult to find an interpersonal behavior in which self-presentation was not occasionally involved (Baumeister, 1982a). 

 Along the way, the self-presentational perspective was expanded in such a way that it became more useful and palatable to a larger number of behavioral researchers. In his book, Impression Management, and other writings, Barry Schlenker (1980, 1985; Schlenker & Weigold, 1992) showed that self-presentation involves far more than attempts to gain approval and, thus, was applicable to understanding a great deal more about interpersonal behavior than simply how people get others to like them. As researchers began to apply self-presentational explanations to real-world problems, many people began to realize that it was not just a laboratory curiosity, but a potent human motive that pervades everyday life. Recent applications of self-presentational approaches to business and organizational settings have further demonstrated their usefulness (Giacalone & Rosenfeld, 1989, 1991).

Self-Presentation

 Impression Management and Interpersonal Behavior 

 Mark R. Leary