The Importance Of Self-Presentation And Impression Management

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In today’s society an individual’s self-presentation and impression management is crucial to many things; landing that job, getting that date, and making new friends. Interaction within our society is how it functions, without it society would fail. First impressions based off a person’s self-presentation is crucial to initiate relationships within society, meanwhile impression management is crucial to maintaining relationships.
Throughout history individuals have been perceived based on how they present themselves. How a person dresses, behaves, and does determines how others will think of them just be looking at them. Self-presentation is defined as how each individual forms what others may think of them or what they even think of themselves …show more content…

Strategic self-presentation is when any individual has an effort to shape others impressions in certain ways in an attempt to gain influence, power, or approval (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, 2013). Examples of strategic self-presentation is to dress in business attire for the job interview, wearing a brand new fancy dress for your date, or wearing the newest style on the first day of class. Self-verification is having the want to have others perceive you as you perceive yourself (Kassin, Fein, & Markus, 2013). Examples of self-verification is dressing in the latest trends so others will see you as having a sense of style, or working out and being active so people will see you as strong and fit. Impression management is defined as adjusting ones attitude or behavior constantly to been seen in a certain way. Impression management emphasizes society’s concerns …show more content…

The view as impression management is like acting suggests that this is an intentional and duplicitous idea (Impression Management, n.d.). Since impression management is where an individual acts or behaves in particular ways to maintain a certain appearance with others it can be seen as deceptive or even manipulative. Behaving in one way when at work can be different when behaving at home with family members, this can be seen as deceptive because it can appear like two different people or two different actors. This can come into the term “two-faced” where an individual may act in a particular way with one person but total opposite when not with that person. Research shows the idea that people will have impression management when they are not even trying. This could be acting a certain way with a friend or spouse, but then acting different with a family member. The research behind this shows that the potential reason to this is that the individual wishes to be perceived in different ways with each person, or even that the friend has different expectations of the individual compared to the family member (Impression Management, n.d.). This research helps explain why people may act different when different company may be around. Once an impression is made with another person it is attempted to be maintain if positive while, attempted to be changed

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