Putting Your Best Face Forward: Key Methods of Self-Presentation

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Putting Your Best Face Forward: Key Methods of Self-Presentation

Advanced Social Psychology · Chapter 4: The Self and IdentitySection 4.4 · lesson 21 of 8512 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Impression management from Goffman's stage to the quantified feed.

  • Locate self-presentation in Goffman's dramaturgical analysis
  • Differentiate the 5 strategies in the Jones and Pittman taxonomy
  • Reconcile self-enhancement with self-verification
  • Evaluate the costs of strategic self-presentation

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Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (1,527 words). Read along, or search it.

The Self and Identity

Putting Your Best Face Forward

You are, right now, presenting a self to somebody. Possibly to a person in the room, possibly to an imagined future viewer. That process has a name, and a surprisingly rigorous literature behind it. This section starts with Goffman, who gave the field its vocabulary in nineteen fifty-nine. Then the Jones and Pittman taxonomy, five strategies with five characteristic failure modes. Then a genuine puzzle. Sometimes people want to be seen accurately rather than well. We resolve that with self-verification theory. Then digital environments, where the classic dynamics get amplified rather than replaced. And finally the bill, because impression management is expensive even when it works.

The Phenomenon

Whenever You Know You Are Seen

Self-presentation is also called impression management, and the two terms are interchangeable. It refers to the processes by which people try to control the impressions others form of them. Now notice the trigger condition, because it is broader than you might expect. Any time a person becomes aware that they are being perceived, something changes. The strategic regulation of self-relevant information becomes a live possibility. Not a certainty. A possibility that is now available. And that condition is met almost constantly in ordinary social life. This is also where the chapter turns outward. The earlier sections dealt with cognitive structures inside one head. Self-schemas, the working self-concept, contingencies of self-worth. Self-presentation is where those structures meet overt social behavior.

Goffman, 1959

Social Life as Staged Performance

Erving Goffman published The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life in nineteen fifty-nine. It supplied the vocabulary the field still uses, more than sixty years later. His move was to treat social interaction as a theatrical performance staged for an audience. The performer occupies a front stage. There, behavior is shaped by the expectations attached to the role. Props, setting, and manner are all part of the claim being made. Then the performer retreats to a back stage. There the performance can be relaxed, rehearsed, or critiqued. Access is restricted, and that restriction is what makes it back stage. One refinement worth holding. The regions are relative, not absolute. A staff room is back stage to the classroom, and front stage to a colleague.

The Qualification

Performance Is Not the Same as Deception

The most common misreading of Goffman is to hear performance as fake. He explicitly denied that, and the denial matters. Most performances are sincere efforts to project the social identity one claims. A new teacher performing authority is not lying about being a teacher. They are doing the work of becoming legible as one. So what does the theatrical metaphor actually buy us? It highlights the constructed, situated character of social selves. A self is assembled for a setting. It is not simply revealed by one. And there is a third piece that students routinely skip. Sustaining a credible performance is collaborative work. Audiences help, by overlooking slips and accepting the claim being made. Which means the audience can also withdraw that cooperation. Then the same behavior that read as competent reads as pretentious instead. Nothing inside the performer changed at all.

Jones And Pittman, 1982

Five Strategies, Five Characteristic Risks

Edward Jones and Thane Pittman organized this into a taxonomy in nineteen eighty-two. Five strategies, distinguished on three grounds. The impression sought, the attribution invited, and the emotional reaction targeted in the audience. Ingratiation seeks to be seen as likeable. It runs on flattery, opinion conformity, and doing favors. Executed poorly it reads as sycophancy, and credibility is lost. Self-promotion seeks to be seen as competent. It claims accomplishments and displays expertise. Executed poorly it reads as conceited, and the person is resented for boasting. Exemplification seeks to be seen as morally worthy. Conspicuous self-sacrifice, and displays of integrity. Executed poorly it reads as hypocrisy, or as sanctimonious. Intimidation seeks to be seen as dangerous, or powerful. Threats, anger displays, dominance cues. Executed poorly the person is simply disliked, and it provokes counter-aggression. Supplication seeks to be seen as needy, or weak. Displays of helplessness or dependence, which invite help. Executed poorly the person is stigmatized, and seen as manipulative.

Reading It Right

Descriptive, Not Exhaustive

Now read the taxonomy correctly, because there is a standard student error here. It is descriptive rather than exhaustive. It is not a complete list of the moves available. Real interactions blend strategies rather than picking one and committing. And strategies are enacted both consciously and habitually. Much self-presentation is not deliberate at all. It is practiced. Empirical work shows that strategy selection is systematically shaped. By perceived audience characteristics, first of all. By the actor's own resources, second. And by whether long-term or short-term goals are currently salient. Two of the five are much better researched than the rest. Ingratiation and self-promotion, partly because they are the most common. In professional and academic settings, they are nearly the default pair.

The Other Motive

Strategic Versus Authentic Self-Presentation

Now a genuine complication, and the most interesting part of this section. An influential refinement splits self-presentation in two. Strategic self-presentation is what we have described so far. The actor projects an image chosen for instrumental advantage. Schlenker set out this framing in nineteen eighty. Authentic self-presentation is the other half. There, the actor projects their genuine self-views. Even at the cost of social reward. That last clause is the striking one. Swann's self-verification theory, from nineteen eighty-three, explains why. People are motivated to be seen as they see themselves. And here is the prediction that surprises everyone. In close, long-term relationships, people seek partners who confirm their self-views. Even the negative ones. Especially the negative ones. Confirmation preserves epistemic coherence and predictability, which people need.

Reconciling

Two Motives, Divided by Context

So we have two motives that look like they contradict each other. Self-enhancement wants to be seen positively. Self-verification wants to be seen accurately, flattering or not. They only contradict if you assume one of them must always win. They do not compete for the same territory. Self-enhancement predominates in short-term and evaluative settings. The job interview. The first date. Anywhere you will be judged and then released. Self-verification predominates in close and long-term relationships. Where being consistently misread, even flatteringly, becomes exhausting. So the general principle is about balance rather than victory. Self-presentation is governed by competing motives. And their balance depends on context, audience, and relational depth.

Walther, 1996

The Hyperpersonal Model

Computer-mediated communication does not simply relocate self-presentation. It changes the conditions under which it happens. Walther's hyperpersonal model, from nineteen ninety-six, names four features. The first is selective self-presentation. You have far greater control over which cues are conveyed at all. The second is reduced situational cues. Much of what would leak in person simply never arrives. The third is asynchronicity, which allows the message to be refined before sending. You get to edit a version of yourself that speech does not allow. The fourth is an idealizing feedback loop, and it is the engine. Polished self-presentations elicit reciprocally idealized responses. Those responses then justify further polishing. The system amplifies itself, which is what hyperpersonal means.

Platforms

What Quantified Feedback Adds

Social-media platforms add something Walther's original model did not have. Quantified feedback signals. Likes, and follower counts. Those numbers can turn impression management into a continuous performance. And one aggregated across an audience you cannot actually see. There is documented cost here, and it should be stated carefully. Extensive curated self-presentation links to higher upward social comparison. And, in some samples, to depressive symptoms. That is Vogel, Rose, Roberts, and Eckles, in twenty fourteen. Note the hedge. In some samples. It is not a universal finding. There is also a documented benefit, which is easy to forget. Online environments enable identity exploration. And they enable disclosure of stigmatized aspects of self. Things that are difficult or unsafe to express face-to-face. So the literature has moved past asking whether social media is good or bad. It now asks how particular practices interact with individual differences and platform affordances.

The Bill

Self-Presentation Is Metabolically Expensive

Now the bill, because self-presentation is not free. It is cognitively, affectively, and physiologically taxing. And the cost is measurable, arriving after the performance ends. Vohs, Baumeister, and Ciarocco demonstrated this in two thousand five. Effortful self-presentation depletes self-regulatory resources. Which impairs subsequent self-control, in tasks that have nothing to do with the performance. There is a second, slower cost as well. Chronic strategic self-presentation can produce identity dissonance. A felt gap between the projected self and the experienced one. That gap is associated with diminished authenticity and lower well-being. The advanced takeaway is the one students most often miss. Impression management has measurable downstream costs even when it succeeds. Success and cost are not alternatives here. You can pay for a performance that worked.

Consolidate

Three Refinements, and Five Terms

Three contemporary refinements are worth carrying forward. First, dispositional moderators. Self-monitoring, attachment style, and narcissism. They predict both how often a person presents strategically, and which strategy they pick. Second, cultural variation, following Heine's two thousand eight synthesis. Independent contexts reward direct self-promotion. Interdependent contexts often penalize exactly the same behavior. Third, and most interesting, self-presentation is partly constitutive of the self. The audiences we choose and the impressions we successfully project feed back. They shape self-concept formation, which is the looking-glass self tradition, still running. Five terms to fix before the next section. Self-presentation itself, front stage and back stage, and ingratiation. Self-verification, the motive to be seen accurately rather than well. And the hyperpersonal model, for mediated environments. Section four point five takes three of these tactics apart in detail.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Putting Your Best Face Forward: Key Methods of Self-Presentation

What is Goffman's dramaturgical theory of self-presentation?
Erving Goffman's 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life describes social life as a theatrical performance. On the front stage, people perform for an audience using props, setting, and manner suited to their role; on the back stage, they relax, rehearse, or critique the performance. Goffman did not mean performances are fake. Most are sincere efforts to project a claimed identity, and audiences help sustain them by overlooking slips.
What are Jones and Pittman's five self-presentation strategies?
Edward Jones and Thane Pittman's 1982 taxonomy lists five strategies: ingratiation, to seem likeable; self-promotion, to seem competent; exemplification, to seem morally worthy; intimidation, to seem dangerous or powerful; and supplication, to seem needy and deserving of help. Each has a typical failure, such as seeming sycophantic, conceited, hypocritical, disliked, or manipulative. Real interactions often blend strategies, and much self-presentation is habitual rather than deliberate.
What is self-verification theory?
Self-verification theory, proposed by William Swann in 1983, holds that people want others to see them as they see themselves, even when their self-views are negative. This preserves a sense of coherence and predictability. It complements self-enhancement, the desire to be seen positively: self-enhancement tends to dominate in short-term evaluative settings like job interviews and first dates, while self-verification tends to dominate in close, long-term relationships.
What is the hyperpersonal model of online communication?
Joseph Walther's 1996 hyperpersonal model explains how online communication can become more idealized than face-to-face interaction. Senders can present themselves selectively, fewer unintended cues leak through, and asynchronous messages can be edited before sending. Receivers then respond to polished self-presentations with idealized impressions, and that feedback encourages further polishing. Social media adds likes and follower counts, which can turn impression management into a continuous performance.

About the Advanced Social Psychology course

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Advanced Social Psychology (Psychology 310) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
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