Week 3

Self-understanding
Self-understanding
and Self-Presentation

Identity – reality and virtual.

 Identity and self-concept – to know yourself – regulates and

structures how we interact with others. Also, for others to
know us.

Symbolic interactionism – argues that the self emerged and

is shaped by social interaction.

‘I’ – the self as stream of consciousness.

‘Me’ – the self as object of perception (a construction of the

self-concept that reflects the society we live in, that is, we
are socially constituted).

G. H. Mead believed that society influences individuals

through the way they think about themselves, and that self-
conception arises and is continually modified through
interaction with people.

The looking-glass self – Our concept of self comes from

seeing ourselves as others see us.
 Self-understanding
and Self-Presentation
Everyday we present ourselves to the people around us. We dress
ourselves and acted to the way that we wanted people to see and
perceive of who we are.

Thus, our roles are as self-presenters, in which we often consciously

try to shape others’ impressions.

In turn, we also observe others, where we often try to explain self-
presenters’ actions and gain insight into their motives and beliefs.

Therefore, we both seek to know peoples’ perception and understand

others’ social presentation. This is known as social perception.
What sort of impression are they
making?
Self-Presentation and Social Perception
 The social perception is divided into two
general areas, i.e. impression formation and
attribution.

Self- Impression formation is often based on rapid

assessment of salient (A feature that is
Presentation noticeable or relevant) and observable
qualities and behaviours in others.
and Social
Perception Strategic self-presentations – conscious and
deliberate efforts to shape others’ impressions
to achieve ulterior goals.

Socialinteraction is like a theatrical

performance – should maintain competent and
appropriate self-presentations.
 Self-Presentation
and Social Perception
Self-Presentation
and Social
Perception
Self-promotion attempts to convey positive
information about the self either through one’s
behaviour or by telling others about one’s positive
assets and accomplishments.

Exemplification is a self-presentation designed to

elicit perceptions of integrity and moral
worthiness, at the same time that it arouses guilt
and emulation in others. Strategic Self-
Modesty - To be modest is to under-represent
Presentations
one’s positive traits, contributions, or
accomplishments.

Intimidation a self-presentation tactic of

arousing fear and gaining power by convincing
others that they are powerful and / or dangerous.
Strategic Self-
Presentations
Supplication - In this
technique, people
advertise their weaknesses
or their dependence on
others, hoping to solicit
help or sympathy out of a
sense of social obligation.

Ingratiationis used to
describe behaviours that
are motivated by a desire
to be liked.
 Embarrassment is an unpleasant emotion
experienced when we believe that we cannot
perform coherently in a social situation.

What happen One common way to recover from these self-

presentation lapses is to provide excuses.

if self- Offering excuses generally bolsters our mood,

presentation unless others don’t buy the excuse.

failed? An excuse must also be plausible to be effective.

The good news is that embarrassing situations are

also unpleasant for onlookers, and thus, they often
help us recover our self-presentations.
What happen if self-presentation failed?
Self-handicapping, a self presentation strategy in which a person
creates obstacles to his or her own performance either to provide an
excuse for failure or to enhance success. Example, a person might go
out the night before his exam, thus greatly decreasing his/her
likelihood of success.

An observer of such action might conclude that the decision not to
study was self-defeating.

Nevertheless, in social psychological theory, the action might be to

serve a second purpose: to protect the self-esteem.

Putting barriers in the way of your success not only provides you with
an excuse for failure, but also will enhance your self-esteem if success
is secured despite the handicap.
 High self-monitors

Self-monitoring which is the tendency to use

cues from other people’s self-presentations in
controlling one’s own self-presentations.

Those who are high in self monitoring spend

considerable time learning about other people
and tend to emphasize impression
management in their social relationships.

Individuals low in self-monitoring are less

attentive to situational cues, and their
behavior is guided more by inner attitudes and
beliefs.

As a result, their behavior is more consistent

across situations.
Impression formation

Impression formation is
the process by which
observers integrate various
sources of information about
others’ self-presentations
into a unified and consistent
judgment(i.e forming
impression on others).

Impression formation sees

the social stage from the
perspective of the audience.
 OUR IMPRESSIONS OF
OTHERS ARE SHAPED BY
THEIR NONVERBAL
BEHAVIOR

 First impressions are often

based on self-presenters’
nonverbal behavior, which
involves communicating
feelings and intentions
without words.

 Two of the more important

nonverbal channels of
communication are facial
expressions and body
movements
FACIAL
EXPRESSIONS

“Face is the image of the

soul.”

Charles Darwin (1872) proposed

that facial expressions not only
play an important role in
communication, but that certain
emotional expressions are innate
and thus are understood
throughout the world.
FACIAL
EXPRESSIONS
People can also reliably
identify at least six primary
emotions: happiness,
surprise, anger, sadness,
fear, and disgust.

Darwin believed that this

ability to recognize emotion
from the observation of
facial expressions was
genetically programmed into
our species and had survival
value for us.
 Besides facial cues,
BODY MOVEMENTS

the body as a whole

can convey a wealth
of information.
 CAN WOMEN “READ”
NONVERBAL CUES
BETTER THAN MEN?

Social psychologists principally explain these gender

differences in reading nonverbal cues by examining the
different social roles played by females and males.

A social role is a cluster of socially defined

expectations that individuals in a given situation are
expected to fulfill.

Female social roles require women to be more

nurturing, friendly, and sensitive, while male social
roles compel men to be more dominant, aggressive, and
emotionally non-expressive.

Females are better able to understand people’s

feelings and thus increase their interpersonal comfort.
 WE FORM PERSONALITY
IMPRESSIONS WITH THE
HELP OF CENTRAL TRAITS

Traits are stable personal

qualities such as “intelligent,”
“kind,” and “unscrupulous.”

Because traits are so

commonly used by us in
forming impressions, social
psychologists have attempted
to understand how they are
combined to form a
meaningful picture of a
person.
~ END ~