Self-presentation or impression management is a goal directed conscious or

subconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people about
a person, object or event; they do so by regulating and controlling information in social
interaction. (Piwinger & Ebert, 2001)
Also, this term person was used by Erving Goffman to introduce a dramaturgical
perspective which emphasizes that people nowadays are playing their roles by wearing
fashionable clothes, socializing with the right category of persons and maintaining distance from
those with another social status.
The three reasons for which people are engaged in self presentation are the following:
Facilitate social interaction
Gain material and social rewards
Self construction
The first motive for which people self present was first introduced by Erving Goffman
(Goffman, 1959) and it observes that social life is highly structured. The importance of smooth
social interaction is noticed in the general hesitation to challenge others presentations.
Another motive for which people self - present is to obtain the resources they want from
others. Because others have what we need we must persuade them to share it with us. For
example, employees have material benefits if they are perceived at work as intelligent, smart,
committed and promising.
Another reason we use impression management is to construct a self image.The self
construction process as we saw in chapter 2 and 3 serves to a personal function: the way we think
others see us. So, for example people who have positive self - views will interact with those who
see them in a more favorable way and the ones with a negative view will socialize with those
who see them in an unfavorable way.
A good example for these three lessons is Fred Demaras youth who lived the life of an
impostor. This was due to the fact that he, from a public image as the gifted son of a popular and
prosperous businessman, became for the Catholic Church a failure and a thief; to the U.S. Army
was a deserter; and for the people from his hometown was the son of a failed businessman. So
eventually, he got rid of his bad identity and assumed the identity of others becoming the Great
Impostor.
In general the difference between one man and another is generated by their public self
consciousness the tendency to have a chronic awareness of oneself as being in the public eye.
Research found that individuals with high public self consciousness engage in more strategic
self presentation to maintain positive self images (Doherty & Schlenker, 1991). Strategic self
presentation focuses on three important aspects: when observers can influence whether or not
we obtain our goals, when these goals are important, and when we think observers have
impressions different from the ones we want to project.
Self monitoring is the tendency to be chronically concerned with ones public image
and to adjust ones actions to fit the needs of the current situation