Self-Presentation and Self-Evaluation: Processes of Self-Control and Social Control

Abstract

No topical area of social psychology has struggled with the issue of public versus private selves more than has the theoretical and empirical work in the area of self-presentation. The several other chapters in this book that deal expressly with self-presentation, or allude to the management of one’s public persona, attest to this. Indeed, it seems inevitable that interest in a class of behaviors characterized as self-presentational would lead to interest in how, and how well, what is inside the individual gets outside in the form of a social self. Further, whether private and public selves are parallel in content and process, and how they may interrelate, have become central questions in the impression management literature. These questions provided the impetus for this chapter.