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The Impact of Self‐Presentations on Self‐Beliefs: Effects of Social Identity and Self‐Presentational Context
Author(s) -
McKillop Kevin J.,
Berzonsky Michael D.,
Schlenker Barry R.
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1992.tb00274.x
Subject(s) - psychology , social psychology , identity (music) , context (archaeology) , presentational and representational acting , self concept , face to face , social identity theory , face (sociological concept) , personal identity , developmental psychology , social group , paleontology , philosophy , social science , physics , epistemology , sociology , acoustics , biology , aesthetics
To examine the impact of self‐presentations on private self‐appraisals, subjects were induced to characterize themselves positively or negatively during a face‐to‐face interview, during a written interview, or on a private questionnaire. As hypothesized, subjects high in Social Identity (the tendency to root identity in social sources of experience) shifted their self‐appraisals in the direction of their positive or negative role after a face‐to‐face interaction, but were less affected by role in their private self‐characterizations. In contrast, subjects low in Social Identity were primarily affected by a private, positive self‐characterization. The latter subjects were not indifferent to how they appeared to others, as indicated by their attempts to rationalize negative, face‐to‐face self‐presentations; they simply did not define themselves in terms of their public appearance.