Post 2: Self-Presentation

Review

In the third lecture, we mainly focused on the psychology of human beings. We first had an overview of human activity in social network, and then talked about the information processing procedure of human. It is very interesting to me that there are such many sub-categories of memory, and I am very curious that how our brain process memory and classify it. After that, we learnt about the hierarchy of cognition. I have never considered that human’ knowledge is a higher level than information processing, and I would like to consider it more from now on.

In the fourth lecture, we talked more about the human psychology in society, especially social networks. We learnt the social cognition theory, which is about how people learn from others, and then discussed collaboration in social network. Actually, from my various observations in life, I can feel people’s behavior is like what is stated in the social cognition theory, but it was the first time I came across the theory. It brought me to a brand new world of psychology!

Today’s Topic: Self-Presentation

The theories match my observations in life. Among these, I am most interested in self-presentation.

Self-presentation is the way that an individual represent him/herself, to match the impression that he/she want to leave to others. This concept was brought out by Erving Goffman (1922-1982) in his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life [1]. In his opinion, life is like a stage and people are like the actors on it. People judge how the others expect according to different situations and act to build their image.

Strategies

There are mainly 5 different ways (strategies) of self-presentation. 1) Self-promotion is trying to make others think you are competent or capable, which is usually used when one is proposing a job vacancy. 2) Ingratiation is trying to make others like you, for example, always praise or flatter others. 3) Intimidation is trying to make others think you are dangerous or dignified, and obey you, for example, a boss showing anger explicitly may make his colleagues work harder. 4) Exemplification is trying to let other respect you as a model, such as doing something moral apparently. 5) Supplication is trying to get others’ sympathy, such as stating yourself as helpless and needy. Besides, there are some other ways of self-presentation. One is called self-handicapping, which is stating there is an obstacle in front of you, then, if you succeed finally, it is because you overcome it; if you failed, it is because the obstacle.

Posting encouraging status - I think it is an example of exemplification


Posting “I’m sick” - an example of supplication, which is usually seen on Facebook

If you ask, which kind do I belong to in most situations? I think I am more of the kind of Ingratiation. When discussing with others, I seldom express different opinion towards others, even though they have a totally different view from me. Although people may apply different strategies in different situations, I seldom apply other strategies. Maybe it is because I have not interacted with others completely and have not come across enough situations!

Motivation

There are different reasons for self-presentation. Firstly, people want to leave good impression to others, and build good image of themselves, this is the basic motivation. Secondly, when one possesses negative emotion, self-presentation of a positive image can help to regulate it, by encouraging positive emotion and restrain negative emotion. Thirdly, due to need for belong, people need to show the membership of the group by presenting they are similar to each other. Fourthly, due to self-esteem, being respected by others or cared by others make people feel good, and self-presentation is one of its main sources.

Effect on Social Networking

On social networking, it is more easy to use self-presentation, especially when one is going to pretend differently from how he/she behaves normally. The reason is that the ways we communicate on social network is limited due to technology so far. For example, we mainly use text and picture on Facebook, twitter etc. Although some software allow us use different ways, such as video, people online can just see a part of us, which is easier to pretend, compared to a community in everyday life.

For example, when more and more lovers “show-off” what they do together on Facebook, men who are single are feeling lonely, because they still cannot find their Ms.right. There is even a Japanese guy who invented a way to pretend to have a lover [2]. See the picture below, he takes photo by himself but makes the photo look like taken by his girlfriend! Although most of the readers think it is useless to pretend to be in love, but it proves that pretending is very easy on social network.

Self-presentation can be seen as a kind of art and it is very hard to explain it fully in such a short paragraph. If you have any doubts, questions or comments, please leave it here and I am looking forward to it! =)

Reference:

[1] Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Anchor Books, 1959
[2] Self Portrait With an Imaginary Girlfirend