Dimensions of favorable self-presentation.

Conducted 2 studies to examine the importance of the tactic used in presenting a favorable self-image (denying negative characteristics vs attributing positive characteristics) and to examine the perceived audience of the self-presentation (internal vs external) on responses to self-report personality items. In Study 1, 60 items were administered under low or high conditions of identifiability to 244 undergraduates. None of the items were found to be sensitive to the identifiability manipulation, which suggested that none of these items could be identified as being particularly sensitive to external audience concerns. In Study 2 with 156 undergraduates, confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the process of attributing positive characteristics to the self is somewhat independent from the process of denying negative characteristics. Self-esteem was positively correlated with the tendency to unrealistically attribute positive traits to the self, and self-conscious persons were less likely to unrealistically deny negative characteristics. Findings suggest that the process of attributing positive characteristics to the self is different from the process of denying negative traits. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nonverbal behavior and self-presentation.

Because of special characteristics of nonverbal behaviors (e.g., they can be difficult to suppress, they are more accessible to the people who observe them than to the people who produce them), the intention to produce a particular nonverbal expression for self-presentational purposes cannot always be successfully translated into the actual production of that expression. The literatures on people's skills at using their nonverbal behaviors to feign internal states and to deceive are reviewed as they pertain to the question of whether people can overcome the many constraints on the translation of their intentions into expressions. The issue of whether people's deliberate attempts to regulate their nonverbal behaviors can be detected by others is also considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depressive self-presentation: Beyond self-handicapping.

An experiment was conducted to examine the notion that depressives' responses would reflect a protective self-presentation style (M. G. Hill et al, 1986), the underlying goal of which would be the avoidance of future performance demands and potential losses in self-esteem. In this study, depressed and nondepressed Ss were asked to perform a relatively simple visual–motor task. Half of the depressed and half of the nondepressed Ss were told that if they were successful at the task, they would be asked to perform a 2nd similar task. The remaining Ss were given no such expectation of future performance. We predicted and found that depressed compared with nondepressed Ss strategically failed at the task when presented with the possibility of future performance and further losses in esteem. Moreover, this strategic failure was associated with some costs; depressed, future performance expectancy Ss experienced more discomfort or negative affect as a result of their performance. The relationship between this depressive self-presentation and self-handicapping strategies is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Further investigation of the self-presentation hypothesis.

Discusses A. Fontana, E. Klein, E. Lewis, and L. Levine's data supporting their self-presentation hypothesis which maintains that "mental illness" is not an illness at all but a socially undesirable mode of behavior. Several methodological problems in the study are noted. A more reliable means of selecting healthy and sick presenters, as well as a 2 (healthy vs. sick presenter) * 2 (anticipation vs. no anticipation of evaluative feedback) * 3 (positive, negative, no feedback) design, was used in a study with 84 male schizophrenics. A critical mode of self-presentation by feedback interaction predicted by the self-presentation hypothesis was not found. The dependent measure was postscores minus prescores on the WAIS Digit Symbol tests. It is concluded that, at best, self-presentation effects are weak and unobserved by the current investigators (Beta error), or at worst the result of extraneous sources of variation. (18 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of self-presentation on the phenomenal self.

Examined the effects of strategic self-enhancement (SE) or self-deprecation (SD) on private self-appraisal. Previous work by E. E. Jones et al (see record 1982-07768-001) indicated that self-perception variables (whether Ss self-referenced) best account for elevations in self-esteem after SE behavior, whereas cognitive dissonance variables (whether Ss were given a clear choice to engage in the behavior) best account for decreases in self-esteem after SD behavior. It was proposed that these findings can be accommodated by a model that represents the phenomenal self as a latitude of acceptance that incorporates both positive and negative self-referent material and as latitudes of rejection containing potential positive and negative material not currently stored in self-referent form. The present study tested the prediction that self-perception would account for positive and negative shifts in self-esteem within Ss' latitudes of acceptance and that cognitive dissonance would explain positive and negative shifts in self-esteem within Ss' latitudes of rejection. Accordingly, 128 depressed and nondepressed undergraduates (as assessed by the Beck Depression Inventory) were instructed to self-reference or to role-play SE or SD during an interview while under high- or low-choice instructions. In support of the model, the results indicate that self-perception processes mediated subsequent shifts in self-esteem for SE nondepressed and SD depressed Ss. Cognitive dissonance processes mediated subsequent shifts in self-esteem for SD nondepressed and SE depressed Ss. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of strategic self-presentation on subsequent self-esteem.

Three experiments (88 male and 36 female undergraduates) explored the effects of self-enhancement or self-deprecation on the actor's self-esteem as measured in a separate context. In Exp I, Ss were influenced, by observing others in a screening interview, to emulate their self-enhancing or self-deprecating behavior when they themselves were interviewed. This carried over and was reflected in their subsequent self-esteem. In Exp II, this carry-over effect was replicated in a setting in which S was interviewed while playing the role of a job candidate. In Exp III, Ss instructed to be self-enhancing in an interview subsequently showed elevated self esteem (unless their interview behavior was prescribed by the experimenter and thus not self-referring). Ss instructed to be self-deprecating subsequently showed lowered self-esteem if they had been given a clear choice as to whether to engage in the interview. It is concluded that self-perception theory can account for self-enhancing carry-over, whereas dissonance theory offers a more appropriate explanation for the carry-over or internalization of self-deprecating actions. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social anxiety and self-presentation: A conceptualization model.

Presents a self-presentation approach to the study of social anxiety that proposes that social anxiety arises when individuals are motivated to make a preferred impression on real or imagined audiences, but perceive or imagine unsatisfactory evaluative reactions from subjectively important audiences. The authors presume that specific situational and dispositional antecedents of social anxiety operate by influencing people's motivation to impress others and their expectations of satisfactorily doing so. In contrast to drive models of anxiety but consistent with social learning theory, it is argued that the cognitive state of the individual mediates both affective arousal and behavior. The traditional inverted-–U relation between anxiety and performance is reexamined in this light. Counseling implications are considered, including the recommendation that treatments be tailored to specific types of self-presentational problems. (142 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a theory of strategic self-presentation in counseling and psychotherapy.

Introduces an impression-management perspective of the therapeutic process. On the basis of the reciprocal view of social influence, a taxonomy is proposed for classifying certain kinds of client self-presentations as defensive and assertive strategies to influence counselors' impressions and behaviors. A defensive or protective strategy is one in which the client seeks to avoid blame or disapproval by the counselor, whereas an assertive strategy is characterized by attempts to gain approval, credit, or social power in the relationship. Four assertive strategies (ingratiation, supplication, self-promotion, and intimidation) and a defensive strategy ("facework") are described, along with their respective short-term tactics. The theoretical relevance of these strategies is described, including the therapeutic contexts that are likely to elicit each class of self-presentation and potential counselor reactions and interventions. 10 propositions are detailed as directions for future research, and earlier literature on the influence of clients' behaviors on counselors' impressions is reviewed from an impression-management perspective. (78 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examining self-presentation as a motivational explanation for comparative optimism.

Five studies examined a self-presentation explanation for comparative optimism. Experiments 1 and 2 laid the foundation for such an account by first showing that people associate a favorable identity-image with the conveyance of an optimistic outlook and that people recognize that an individual may be perceived in a negative light if his or her optimistic estimates are disconfirmed, hence raising the issue of potential accountability demands. Following the issue of accountability, the results across Experiments 3, 4, and 5 provided consistent evidence that people employ comparative optimism in their self-presentation efforts but only if the circumstances involve little risk of being held potentially accountable. Specifically, when self-presentational situations involved greater accountability demands, comparative optimism decreased (less optimistic), whereas, when these situations involved reduced accountability demands, comparative optimism increased (more optimistic). In short, the current experiments present compelling evidence demonstrating that comparative optimism may reflect an individual’s goal to self-present a favorable identity-image, with the provision that such efforts are constrained by accountability pressures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-persuasion and self-presentation as mediators of anticipatory attitude change.

Three experiments with 197 undergraduates determined when anticipatory attitude change occurs via self-persuasion or self-presentation and identified the implications for attitude persistence of a shift by either process. In Exp I, Ss' thoughts and attitudes were assessed while they expected either a counterattitudinal or a proattitudinal message. Ss generated thoughts and reported attitudes consistent with the direction of the anticipated message, even though their responses were anonymous. In the final 2 experiments, the publicness of Ss' attitudes was varied to examine the impact of self-presentational concerns on thoughts and attitudes. In Exp II, Ss in the private condition spontaneously generated more thoughts relevant to the anticipated counterattitudinal message than did Ss in the public condition. In Exp III, some Ss were told that the anticipated counterattitudinal message was not forthcoming. When the message was canceled in the public condition, Ss failed to show an anticipatory shift in attitude; in the private condition, however, anticipatory attitude change was obtained. It is concluded that when self-presentation concerns are manifest, temporary changes in attitude occur in response to these concerns. In contrast, when pressures to self-present are low, anticipatory changes reflect genuine shifts in attitude resulting from an active consideration of the merits of the counterattitudinal position. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Undermining intrinsic moral motivation: External reward and self-presentation.

Investigated whether paying people for helping undermines an important source of intrinsic motivation to help—the internalized sense of moral obligation. Self-perception theory suggests that individuals paid to help will infer that they have engaged in this behavior for the reward and not for reasons intrinsic to helping. Previous research has failed to find an undermining of intrinsic motivation that could be traced to the perception that helping was overjustified. In the present study, it was hypothesized that people's desire to appear morally motivated may have prevented the detection of overjustification effects. A bogus pipeline procedure was used to convince Ss that their true attitudes could be tapped, so that they would refrain from socially desirable but inaccurate self-presentation. The design consisted of 2 measurement conditions—bogus pipeline and pencil-and-paper—crossed with 3 activity conditions in which the 60 undergraduate Ss recorded a text either to help a blind student for pay or with no reward or to provide material for a study of vocal intonations. As predicted, payment for help undermined the sense of moral obligation only in the bogus pipeline condition. Unpaid helpers in this condition showed enhanced intrinsic motivation. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-consciousness and self-presentation: Being autonomous versus appearing autonomous.

Privately self-conscious people may resist social pressures because (a) they tune out the social matrix and express their beliefs irrespective of how they make them appear to an audience (the social obliviousness hypothesis) or (b) they prefer to create an identity of being autonomous and will monitor and control their self-presentations to construct this image for audiences (the autonomous identity hypothesis). The results of three studies supported the latter. The self-identifications of privately self-conscious subjects emphasized autonomy and personal identity, whereas those of publicly self-conscious subjects emphasized conformity, social identity, and social trepidations. An experiment found that privately self-conscious subjects publicly changed their attitudes if by so doing they protected the appearance of autonomy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of gender, interpersonal orientation, and self-presentation in distributive-justice behavior.

Tested hypotheses derived from 3 explanations of the consistent differences in the ways men and women allocate rewards between themselves and others. 71 male and 71 female introductory psychology students who had scored either high or low on an Interpersonal Orientation (IO) Scale allocated monetary rewards between themselves and a same-sex partner with inferior performance. Allocations were either public or private, and future interaction with the partner either was or was not expected. Contrary to the IO explanation, women allocated rewards more equally than men did despite the fact that men and women were equivalent in their degree of interpersonal orientation. High-IO individuals allocated rewards more equally than did low-IO individuals but only in private. Contrary to the self-presentational explanation, both women and men allocated rewards more equally when allocations were public than when they were private and when future interaction was expected than when it was not. Contrary to the cognitive explanation, few gender differences in performance expectations, evaluations, or attributions were observed, and these factors were unrelated to reward allocations. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repression and self-presentation: When audiences interfere with self-deceptive strategies.

To defend against threatening feedback, one may avoid and ignore it, or one may dwell on it and think of refutations. Repressors who received threatening feedback privately spent the least amount ot time reading it, whereas repressors who received the same feedback publicly spent a long time reading it. Thus, the audience prevented repressors from ignoring threatening feedback; instead, they thought and worried about the partner's (bad) impression of them. Nonrepressors were unaffected by the favorability of the evaluation or the public nature of the situation. Repressors showed superior recall for the few bits of threatening information embedded in a generally favorable evaluation, suggesting that they are especially sensitive when their defenses are down. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethical issues in supervision.

Suggests the need for a review of current ethical standards regarding supervision of psychotherapists and presents alternative approaches to the supervisor–supervisee relationship. Group or vertical supervision (with peers and senior personnel) may reduce supervisee anxiety and provide more opportunities for objective support. Sharing supervisees may encourage supervisors to compare supervisory problems. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mutuality in psychotherapy supervision.

Contends that mutuality, the quality of shared participation and interchange of thoughts and feelings, is a key element of the supervisory relationship in general and a specific component in contracting for supervision and in developing therapeutic skills. It is suggested that there is a parallel between the processes of supervision and psychotherapy. Supervisor–supervisee dialogs are included to illustrate mutuality in learning, in contracts, in assessment, in interventions, and in process monitoring. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social anxiety, self-presentation, and the self-serving bias in causal attribution.

Two experiments with 160 undergraduates studied the contribution of self-presentation concerns to the self-serving bias in causal attribution (individuals' tendency to assume more personal responsibility for a success than for a failure) and its occasional, but systematic, reversal. In Exp I, high- but not low-social-anxiety Ss (selected by scores on the Social Anxiety subscale of the Self-Consciousness Scale) presented themselves in a far more modest light when a committee of high prestige others was to join the experimenter in evaluating their behavior than when the committee evaluation was canceled. In Exp II, this reversal of the self-serving bias among high-social-anxiety Ss was replicated, and it was also found that both high- and low-social-anxiety Ss portrayed the causes of their behavior in a more modest fashion when they responded via the "bogus pipeline," a measurement technique designed to reduce distortion and dissimulation in verbal responses, than when they responded in the traditional paper-and-pencil format. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The roles of group supervision of supervision.

This article recommends that group supervision of supervision be an integral part of the curriculum of any senior professional who is involved in regular supervision of trainees. Work in the group setting enables use of group dynamics to understand therapeutic events as well as processes of mirroring and identification in the supervision. The supervisory group may promote feelings of security and containment in the supervisors while attenuating and minimizing their potential feelings of vulnerability and validating their perceptions of reality. At the same time, such a group gives rise to difficulties (owing to issues of trust and confidentiality) both inside and outside the group (e.g., among trainees who develop fantasies about the proceedings of the group). Some general resolution of such problems is presented here. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Eating lightly" and the self-presentation of femininity.

In Experiment 1, male and female subjects were given an opportunity to snack as they participated in a "get-acquainted study" with a same-sex or opposite-sex partner (confederate) whose social desirability was manipulated. Consistent with the hypothesis that women may eat less when motivated to present themselves in a feminine light, female subjects ate significantly less with a desirable male partner than in the remaining three conditions. In contrast, male subjects did not eat more (or less) with a desirable woman, although they did show an overall tendency to eat less with female (vs. male) partners. In Experiment 2, female subjects snacked as they got acquainted with a desirable male partner (confederate). Before this interaction, subjects received feedback indicating that they had either very masculine or very feminine interests. In addition, subjects believed either that their male partner was aware of their gender feedback or that he was unaware. Consistent with predictions derived from Schlenker's (1982) analytic-identity theory of social conduct, subjects in the partner-aware conditions ate less when they had received masculine (vs. feminine) feedback, whereas subjects in the partner-unaware conditions ate less when they had received feminine (vs. masculine) feedback. Implications for understanding eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)