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Introduction The ability to manage impressions is an integral part in everyday life as individuals are able to alter people’s perceptions according to how one sees or wants to be seen by others. Self-presentation, also referred to as impression management, implies that an individual is monitoring how one is being perceived and evaluated by others and has considered the self-presentational implications of one’s behavior (Leary, Nezlek, Downs, Radford-Davenport, Martin, & McMullen, 1994). The amount of attention that people devote to their public images varies across situations and individuals. Some people are oblivious of others’ impression of them. On the other hand, there are people who are highly attuned to others evaluations and devote enormous amounts of effort to create the correct impression. A majority of people usually operate somewhere between these two bounds in that they tend to monitor at a moderate level on how they come across to others. However, in many situations people who are not monitoring or thinking about the impressions they are making can become quickly aware of others’ evaluative reactions (Leary & Kowalski, 1990). Impression Motivation The discrepancy between why in certain situations people are motivated to affect how others perceive them, and other times not is referred to as impression motivation (Tetlock & Manstead, 1985). Leary and Kowalski (1990) described impression motivation as being affected by three primary sets of factors: the perceived goal relevance of the person’s impressions, the value of the person’s desired goals, and the discrepancy between the person’s desired and current images. Goal-relevance of impressions The more important the attainment of a goal is to one’s self image, the more motivated people are to manage impressions to achieve that goal. People become more concerned with how others perceive them. Ferris and Porac (1984) researched some of the factors that would determine how relevant one’s impressions are to the fulfillment of their goals. Their results indicated that people set higher goals when others were present. In other words, the more public a behavior is, the more significant it is to manage impressions to accomplish that goal. However, there are private behaviors that some people feel is necessary to self-present. Leary and Kowalski (1990) stated, “people may privately prepare to perform impression-relevant behaviors in public” (pg. 38). In some instances, people self-present in public settings so often that the actions become habitual, which may eventually carry over into their private behaviors. Value of desired goals People are motivated to manage their impressions the more they value a particular goal. Because the value of outcomes increases as their availability decreases, impression motivation should increase when valued outcomes are scarce. Pandey and Rastagi (1979) found that ingratiation in the workplace appears to increase, for example, as job competition becomes more fierce, and strategic self-presentation arises when valued resources are scarce. However, individual differences occur with people who are high in need for approval, because they are more motivated to self-present after failure in order to preserve their self-esteem (Schneider & Turkat, 1975). This illustrates that being high in the need for approval is associated with greater incentive to manage impressions. Discrepancy between desired and current image This type of impression motivation occurs when there is a discrepancy between how the person wants to be seen by others and the image that person thinks others have of them. When an individual recognizes this discrepancy, there is a motivation to reduce the discrepancy. In a majority of situations, an embarrassing incident that is witnessed by someone else causes the need to initiate self-presentational tactics. Leary and his colleagues (1996) conducted an experiment that caused participants to become embarrassed, and then researchers noted that some of these participants engaged in self-presentational tactics to improve their damaged social image. Participants, through verbal expressions or blushing, were motivated to portray face-saving tactics to try to repair their image in the researchers’ eyes due to the embarrassing incident. Another type of discrepancy can occur when a person conveys an impression that is inconsistent with his or her own sense of self (Leary & Kowalski, 1990).
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