My Self-presentation to Others - Essay Example

Self presentation Self presentation Question Identity is all about how we present ourselves to others. Choose a cultural practice of self-presentation that takes place in a particular location or cultural setting (for example, going to a party, having a job interview, setting up a Facebook profile) and explain what this practice says about the self and its relationship to society. Self-presentation is the behavior that attempts to convey some information about oneself or some image of an individual to other people. It is not only a prevalent aspect of our lives; it is also a very significant factor too. Our success in leading others to believe truly we possess various characteristics has an influence on our outcomes in life (Briggs & Hogan, 1986). Who our friends are, whom we marry whether we get ahead at work and many other outcomes depend, to a significant approach, on our ability to convince people that we are worthy of their love, their respect, trust and their friendship. Undoubtedly, the need to create a positive impression is one reason that many people spend millions of dollars a year on personal appearance products and cosmetics. The concern of self-presentation leads people to engaging in behaviors that intensify their appearance to others but concurrently endanger their physical well-being (e.g., excessive dieting, the excessive expenditure of family finances). This behavior denotes a class of motivations in human behavior and thus its seen as a key factor for consideration in the day to day life. Several factors can lead to this motive, one of the most significant occurs when the desired external awards depend on the evaluation of others. Job interviews and first dates are good examples where we are highly concerned with making a positive impression and try "put our best foot forward." The motivation to engage in self-presentation tends to increase when we focus on other peoples attention. Although there are deviations, people are generally more keen to the impressions they are imposing when they are interacting with informal acquaintances and business associates than when they are interacting with family members, close friends, and loved ones. These motivations are in part stable disposition of people, but they depend purely on situation factors to obtain them. However, self-motivation are activated by the evaluative presence of other individual and by other peoples knowledge of ones behavior. There are two types of self-presentational motivations (Baumeister, 1982). One of the motives is "pleasing the audience." This is where an individual tries to match ones self-presentation to the audiences expectations and preferences. The other form of self-presentation is "self-construction) which involves the individual matching ones self-presentation to ones ideal self. The pronouncement of the audience-pleasing motive differs across situations, especially since different audiences have different preferences. Personalities in individual differ and thus what might be one person best might be the other person worst presentation. One presents oneself differently when attending a job interview than when attending church or a party with ones sorority or fraternity age-mates. The audience-pleasing motives can at times produce contradictory or inconsistent self-presentations with different types of audience. In addition, audience-pleasing self-motivations differ in strength as a function of the audiences power and importance, particularly with regards to how much the self-presenter is dependent on the available audience. Significant implementations of the audience-pleasing idea were introduced by Pittman and Jones (1982). The authors hinted out that self-presentation can be pushed towards the audience yet not towards making a beneficial impression. Instead of trying to impress the audience, someone may desire to present herself or himself oppositely as dangerous, as morally virtuous, or as needy and helpless. The general principle behind all these self-presentations is that people present themselves with the aim of creating a particular and useful impression on the audience, in order to manipulate or influence the audience to benefit the self-presenter. Often this is accomplished by pleasing the audience as likable and competent, but sometimes it can be most useful to appear helpless or dangerous. In everyday life, people engage in self-presentation for a variety of reasons depending on situations and individual. One of the reasons why people bother in this area is to facilitate social interaction. The primary key function of self-presentation is to define the nature of a social situation (Goffman, 1959). Most social interactions are very role governed, and each individual has a role to play and the interaction continues smoothly when these tasks are performed efficiently. Erving Goffman high-lighted this function of self-presentation where he noted that social life is highly structured. In some cases, the respective structure is formalized but most often it is tactically understood and informal (e.g. norms of etiquette guide and politeness which govern our social interactions). Among these norms is the one that people reinforce rather than undermine one anothers public individuality and Goffman refers to these attempts at face work. Towards this direction, people may misrepresent themselves or otherwise refrain from saying what they feel or feel about. This kind of behavior seems to be primarily geared by the desire to reduce tension and avoid conflict (Epstein, 1996). Another reason why people engage themselves in self-presentation is to gain material and social rewards or avoid material and social punishments. It is usually in our best attractions to have others view us in a certain way. Employees have a material interest generally in being perceived as promising, bright and committed. To the extent that they are successful in including these impressions in the minds of their employers, they are proved to be promoted ad given rises. Social rewards also depend on the peoples ability to convince others that they possess certain qualities. Being a leader involves persuading others that we are efficient in leading while being liked entails convincing others that we are likable. Jones (1990) notes that this type of strategic self-presentation represents a form of social influence in which one person attempts to gain power over another individual. This approach assumes that people are in a better position to influence the e nature of social interaction in a manner that favors the purposes if we are able to control how others see us. This type of emphasis is common in many popular books that have titles like how to win friends and impact people and winning through intimidation (Ringer, 1973). To some people, the idea that people actively strive to manipulate how they are viewed by others conjures up images of Machiavellianism and duplicity. However, strategic self-presentation does not particularly mean that we are trying to deceive others though sometimes we are but it can also involve genuine attempts to bring the positive qualities to the attention of others. Lying and misrepresentation tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Another reason why people try to create impressions of ourselves in the minds of others is to construct a particular identity for ourselves (Baumester, 1980). This type of self-presentational behavior serves as more personal and private function where convincing others that we possess some quality or attributes is a means of convincing ourselves. Sometimes self-construction is initiated with the aim of creating an identity while, at other times, self-construction is perfomed to confirm an already accepted self-view. E.g., the successful Wall Street banker, may carry a beeper, wear suspenders, and drive a luxurious car just to signal to others that he is indeed a man of wealth and waste. Most researchers refer this behavior as "self-symbolizing." Most people like to recall of themselves as being talented, competent, likable and so forth and by convincing others that they possess these essential attributes, people are able to convince themselves which makes people feel better about them in return. From this perspective, we can say that people seek to create impressions in the minds of other individuals because it enables them feel better about themselves to do so. Self-construction can also serve as a motivational factor where people are expected to be who they claim to be (Goffman, 1959). When people publicly announce an intention or stake a claim to an identity, they experience additional pressures to make good on their claims. Although everyone enroll in self-presentation, people differ with respect to how they are with their public image and with the kinds of impressions that they try to convey. Mark Synder developed a self-monitoring table to evaluate the degree to which people monitor and control their behavior in public situations. High self-monitors refer themselves as highly pragmatic and flexible people who strive to be the perfect person for every occasion. When joining a social situation, they try to discern what the model person would do in that particular situation and then use this knowledge to guide their behavior. Low self-monitors adopt a different criterion where they regard themselves as highly principled people who evaluate consistency between who they do and what they are. When entering a social situation, they focus inwards and use their beliefs, attitudes, and feelings to guide their behavior. Instead of striving to be the perfect person to the situation, they strive to be themselves in social settings. Public Self-Consciousness related to the differences in self-monitoring are the differences in public self-consciousness. Feinstein used the term private self-consciousness to refer to these differences and afterward developed a scale to assess the level to which people emphasize on the public and observable aspects of themselves. Individuals whose scores are high are very familiar with themselves and think a lot about their general aspects while those who score low in pubic self-consciousness are less aware of themselves as a social subject and do not think as much about their public appearance (Scheibe, 1982). What impressions do people try to create? The number of impressions that different people try to create of themselves in the minds of others is almost limitless. Similarly, these impressions tend to fall into a smaller number of classes. Integration is probably the most familiar management strategy as it aims to attract the other persons like towards you. A person will try to attract the attention of the interviewers in a job interview by dressing in a nice, ironed suit. His self-presentation will matter when the employers evaluate him. Since we tend to like people who agree with us, possess positive interpersonal qualities, do favor for us and say nice things about us, it should come as no surprise that integration can be accomplished. This may be through displaying positive personal characteristics, flattery or through imitation. If your audience knows you are trying to manipulate them, they may distrust or dislike you which is a rare case. Self-promotion is another self-presentational strategy where a person seeks to convince people of his/her competence. The primary key in self-promotion is trying to get people think that one is capable, talented or intelligent. In most scenarios, it is very beneficial to be seen as both likable and competent as well. A person attending a job interview will dress accordingly and portray a highly skilled behavior with the aim of showing the employers that he or she is competent in the respective position and thus be considered perfect. No matter which impressions people will try to portray, these impressions will be valid only if the others accept them. Successful self-presentation will always involve a relation between two considerations; beneficiallity (presenting the most significant and advantageous image possible) and believability (making sure the image presented is believable by the other people). Job candidates strive to be recognized as diligent and competent but if they go overboard and describe themselves in a superhuman terms relation, they risk arousing suspicion and inadvertently creating a wrong impression. To summarize, successful self-presentation involves a combination of motivation and ability. Individuals can be motivated to make a particular feeling, but they may fail because they are unaware of the required behaviors or because they unable to perform the appropriate behaviors. Viewed in this dimension, it can be concluded that successful self-presentation is a complicated affair requiring a good deal of skills. References Baumeister, R. (1986). Public self and private self. New York: Springer-Verlag. Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Hughes, V., & Weller, D. (1991). Self presentation skills. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Education. Leary, M. (1996). Self presentation: Impression management and interpersonal behavior. Boulder Colo.: Westview Press. Malone, M. (1997). Worlds of talk: The presentation of self in everyday conversation. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press ;. Scheibe, K. (1995). Self studies: The psychology of self and identity. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Read More