Are You Kind, Big Deal, or Kind of a Big Deal? The Role of Communication in Impression Management

Abstract

People communicate constantly, in order to pursue different goals. One prominent goal in conversations and interactions is to make positive impressions on others, such as appearing trustworthy, warm, or competent. When successful at conveying positive impressions, people improve their chances of interpersonal and professional success. This symposium brings together novel research papers that theorize and empirically investigate the links among conversation goals, behaviors, and impression management. First, we identify the different—and often conflicting—goals that people may have in conversations, and the tradeoffs that people must make in managing their impressions. Next, across papers, we showcase several communication strategies that help people make positive impressions and effectively resolve the tradeoff that people face between appearing warm and appearing competent. Specifically, we identify when and why speech pauses, compliments to others, laughter, and ingratiating behaviors can help communicators achieve impression management and other interpersonal goals. Taken together, this set of research papers highlights the dilemmas we must navigate in conversation, and underscores the importance of communication for impression- and conflict management, and for organizational outcomes. The Conversational Circumplex, Informational and Relational Motives in Conversation Presenter: Alison Wood Brooks; Harvard U. How Pausing Shapes Person Perception Presenter: Alex Bryant Van Zant; Rutgers Business School Presenter: Jonah Berger; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Presenter: Grant Packard; York U., Toronto Presenter: Harry Wang; Rutgers Business School Bragging Better, The Benefits of Promoting Peers Presenter: Einav Hart; George Mason U. Presenter: Eric VanEpps; U. of Utah, David Eccles School of Business Why Do Women Laugh More Than Men? Presenter: Thomas Bradford Bitterly; HKUST Business School Presenter: Alison Wood Brooks; Harvard U. Presenter: Jennifer Aaker; Stanford Graduate School of Business A Silver Lining for Women at Work? Actor Gender Predicts Responses to Ingratiation Presenter: M. Ena Inesi; London Business School Presenter: Einav Hart; George Mason U.