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After reading this article you will learn about the art of impression management.
Impression management is often considered to be an art. We sometimes come across, individuals who draw a lot of attention. Wherever they go, people are instantly impressed by them and develop a positive and favourable impression about them. In other words, they are magnetic.
This appeal need not have anything to do with their beauty, attire, or way of talking. And we wish we had at least a fraction of such personal magnetism. This makes one feel conscious about on self in the social setting, i.e., when an individual is in the presence of others.
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Not only are we concerned about how much we reveal to others but we are concerned about the manner in which this revelation occurs. However, what we reveal and how we reveal, will vary according to the company and situation in which we find ourselves.
For instance, a doctor who is travelling in a bus or in a train will reveal a social self which is different from what he reveals when he is dealing with his patients or attending a medical conference and is entirely different from the self he might reveal at a cocktail party.
Erving Goffman assumes that in our social encounters we try to give a variety of impressions, and like actors on the stage, attempt to present the best and most appropriate performance in each encounter. For example, a young professor who begins his lecture in the classroom would like to create an image in the eyes of the students that he is the master of his art, and knowledgeable in his field.
To create such an impression he will perhaps go about it in the following manner:
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From the very beginning he will try to put on ‘a proper front’. He will attempt to project a manner and appearance which is controlled and professional. He will not appear in faded and dowdy attire or project an unfriendly manner.
If he does so, his ruin is assured. Another essential factor is involved in one’s role. It would help the professor immensely if he really believes that he is a teacher and performs his role to the best of his ability, just as a good actor either on the screen or on the stage enacts the role most convincingly in order to represent perfection.
It is also necessary to realise what students expect out of a professor. He will have to perform certain things which are not actually his functions or against his principles because he is expected to do so. For example, even if he does not agree on principle about the demands of some complaining students he may have to express sympathetic support, lest he be branded as an anti-student staff member in the university.
Another factor which is required for good performance and which as a consequence can create a good impression is the maintenance of a certain social distance. This created distance is referred to as mystification. A professor must maintain an appropriate distance from his students; he cannot become too familiar or friendly, lest the mystery and awe of his role be lost in the process.
Imagine the professor accompanying the students in all their get-together like jam-sessions, stag parties, picnics and other such entertainments. Many students want to think of a professor as a person endowed with special talents which set him mysteriously apart from the student population in spite of his being a human being who breathes and eats like them. These are some of the characteristics prescribed by Goffman that enable us both to create the impression we wish to create and to learn something about our own effectiveness.
Looking-Glass Self:
The sociologist Charles Horton Cooley provided an interesting analysis of how we perceive others and our own selves through the perceptions of others. In other words, in the very act of trying to create a particular impression, we inevitably reveal clues about our real selves that other people pick up, interpret and use in responding to our behaviour.
Their view of us, and, thus, our view of ourselves through them, enables us to develop a concept of self, i.e., to discover what we are really like. We acquire awareness of ourselves through others, like a social mirror in which we learn to view ourselves from the perspective of others whom we consider to be significant.
Such a perception was termed as the looking -glass self by Cooley. We often see such phenomena. For instance we come across individuals who feel are intelligent and smart and exhibit such behaviour, when others around them keep constantly telling them that they are so. This is a two way process – others see it or think that they see intelligence in you and you tend to reveal that aspect to them. This analysis of the looking-glass self is of great relevance and importance to us because it indicates that in social interaction what we get back from others is what we project of ourselves and how others see it.
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Thus, an individual, in order to create pleasant and healthy impressions about his self needs to act in such a way that it appears to others and makes them favorably disposed to him and ultimately make him feel that he is a good person. This feeling of ‘being a good person’ is indeed a very comfortable state and makes one feel strong, healthy and induces a state of mental well-being, especially if many others also share this view about yourself.