Impression Management

1. Impression Management Scott Allison Department of Psychology

2. Cheesey Activity • Break up into pairs • Find out which one of you is younger • If you are the younger person, imagine that you want the other person to like you. Not in a romantic sense. You just want him/her to like you. • You have 3 minutes to interact with this person. Go.

3. Impression Management: The Definition • The process of portraying yourself to others in a manner that creates a desired impression

4. Two Types of Impression Management • Constructive -- helps in the formation of self identity • Strategic -- helps in the attainment of some interpersonal goal

5. Constructive Impression Management • Goffman (1959) • Other people’s reactions to us determine our sense of self • Human interactions are a “play” in which we try to validate each others’ portrayals of “self” • Social construction of self is important

6. Strategic Impression Management • Jones & Pittman (1982) • Power differences often characterize social relationships • We engage in strategic impression management to “tilt” social outcomes in a favorable direction

7. Impression Management:Crass manipulation or effective social interaction? • Which type of person are you? • When I’m in a situation, I ask myself what is the ideal person for this situation, and how can I be that person. • When I’m in a situation, I ask myself how can I best be “me” in this situation. • Snyder’s (1985) Self-Monitoring concept

8. Impression Management Findings • We tend to think that while others engage in such strategies, I personally do not (Jones, 1990) • What is the most common type of strategic impression management? • INGRATIATION • Also known as brown-nosing, butt-kissing, and sucking up

9. Ingratiation • Universal agreement about standard ingratiation tactics • These include: • Showing an interest in the person • Smiling • Eye contact • Agreeing • Flattery

10. Ingratiation Works! Why does it work? Ingratiators are good at concealing their ulterior motives The targets of the ingratiation show vanity; they believe what they hear Jones (1990) Study: One person ingratiated another while a third person observed Results: Targets believed that the comments were more authentic & justified than did observers of the interaction

11. Effective Ingratiation Disagree with the boss on trivial issues, agree on important issues Show low confidence when you disagree with the boss but high confidence when you agree Show modesty, but not too much modesty Show modesty by pointing out a few of your weaknesses that are obviously trivial compared to your strengths Don’t be ‘tactical’ when your dependence is obvious; timing is everything Use secondary sources -- get others to ingratiate for you Connect yourself to symbolically appropriate others

12. Cialdini & deNicholas (1989) study of Modesty Participants performed either poorly or well on an initial task. Participants then judged a person named Donald who was either portrayed positively or negatively. Donald happened to share the same birthday as the participants. Which participants called attention to the birthday coincidence? The answer: Participants who did poorly on the initial task and judged the positive Donald Participants who did well on the initial task and judged the negative Donald (a demonstration of subtle MODESTY)

13. Impression Management Taxonomy