Self-presentation Research Articles

Traveling alone, reviewing differently: identifying distinctive hotel evaluation behaviors of solo travelers

ABSTRACT Despite the rise in solo travelers, differences in online review behaviors between solo and companioned travelers remain underexplored. The current research, using the Elaboration Likelihood Model, self-presentation theory, and group polarization theory, finds that solo travelers give higher review scores based on hotel star ratings and value-for-money, but they weigh hotel service quality less than group travelers even after accounting for hotel heterogeneity through multilevel modeling. Additionally, solo travelers’ review scores are less polarized than companioned travelers. These findings offer valuable recommendations for hotel management and targeted marketing strategies aimed at solo travelers.

The Complexities of Social Dining: Investigating Role of Impression Management, External Eating, and Known Companion Towards Food Portion

This study aims to investigate how dining with acquaintances or friends, the desire to manage others’ impressions, and external cues such as smell and appearance, influence food portion sizes. The research employed a quasi-experimental design, involving 236 participants who were active students at Semarang State University, all of whom were not on a diet, did not have allergies, and non-vegetarians. A General Linear Model Univariate analysis reveals that individuals who ate alone had a bigger portion compared to when eating with a known companion (F(1,228)=4.059, p=0.045, partial η2=0.17). Furthermore, the impression management or external cues influenced the individuals to take bigger portions when eating alone (F(1,228)=5.290, p =0.022, partial η2=0.023; F(1,228)=4110, p=0.044). However, those with high impression management and external eating tendencies took larger portions when eating with a known companion (F(1,228)=4.652, p=0.032, partial η2=0.020). Thus, the presence of a known companion had a less significant influence on overall portion sizes (F(1,228)=4.059, p=0.045, partial η2=0.17). These findings suggest that known companions exert a complex effect on eating behaviors. Future research should provide clearer guidelines for the appropriate portion sizes companions should take, while emphasizing healthy food choices in social dining setting.

Shaping triumph from within: an investigation into employee-based brand co-creation, motivation drivers and enhanced job-related organisational performance

PurposeDrawing on the co-creation literature and self-determination theory, this study takes a broader organisational perspective linking employees’ motivational antecedents (corporate brand socialization, employee brand identification and impression management) and employee-based brand co-creation (EBBC), with three employee-level outcomes: sales performance, employee resilience and adaptive selling. We therefore bridge the complex nexus between employees and organisational performance.Design/methodology/approachSurvey data of 313 employees across industries and different-sized business-to-business (B2B) companies in China were collected. We used AMOS 21 to carry out structural equation modelling (SEM) for testing the main hypotheses.FindingsThe results reveal that EBBC is driven by external, internal and self-related motivations and leads to an increase in the three employee performance-related outcomes. The results further indicate that employees’ social media usage exerts contrasting moderating effects for each of the three motivational antecedents: While it strengthens the effect of employee identification on EBBC, it weakens the effect of corporate brand socialization on EBBC and exerts no effect on the relationship between impression management and EBBC.Practical implicationsThis study confirms the effectiveness of EBBC in improving performance outcomes for B2B employees, particularly sales performance, resilience and job satisfaction, all of which are crucial for employee success. On the basis of our findings, in terms of employee satisfaction and performance, and in addition to conventional strategies and incentives, B2B organisations should encourage employee co-creation activities as outlined above, since such activities tend to impact these outcomes positively.Originality/valueThis study features and substantiates the self-related goal initiatives in EBBC, such as developing a sense of self-promotion desires and uncovers a moderator of the relationships between motivational antecedents and EBBC. These findings highlight the managerial relevance of specific motivational and psychological pathways in building employee brand co-creation behaviours, employee outcomes and organisational performance via employee sales.

A Rollercoaster of Grades Versus Growth in the Clerkship Year: A Phenomenological Study of Medical Student Experience with Competency Development.

As competency-based medical education (CBME) continues to advance in undergraduate medical education, students are expected to simultaneously pursue their competency development while also discriminating themselves for residency selection. During the foundational clerkship year, it is important to understand how these seemingly competing goals are navigated. In this phenomenological qualitative study, the authors describe the experience of 15 clerkship students taking part in a pilot pathway seeking to implement CBME principles. These students experienced the same clerkship curriculum and requirements with additional CBME components such as coaching, an entrustment committee to review their data, a dashboard to visualize their assessment data in real-time, and meeting as a community of practice. Students shared their experiences with growth during the clerkship year. They conveyed the importance of learning from mistakes, but pushing past their discomfort with imperfect performance was a challenge when they feel pressure to perform well for grades. This tension led to significant effort spent on impression management while also trying to identify their role, clarify expectations, and learn to navigate feedback. Tension exists in the clinical environment for clerkship students between an orientation that focuses on maximizing grades versus maximizing growth. The former defined an era of medical education that is fading, while the latter offers a new vision for the future. The threats posed by continuing to grade and rank students seems incompatible with goals of implementing CBME.

Factors influencing luxury consumption and the moderating role of debt attitude amongst Generation Z in China

In recent years, China’s economy has undergone rapid development. Increased disposable income and the rapid expansion of Internet-based financial services have positioned China as the largest market for luxury goods. Gen Z, the youngest demographic within emerging markets, is expected to play a pivotal role as the primary driver of the luxury market. However, while China’s luxury market continues to exhibit a high growth rate, this growth has gradually decelerated in comparison to the previous two years according to researchers. This presents a significant challenge for the luxury industry, as maintaining and enhancing the global growth trend has become a pressing concern where consumer behavior is concerned. The second key issue addressed in this study revolves around the concepts of compulsive buying and brand addiction, which can lead individuals, particularly Gen Z, to develop an addiction to luxury consumption. This study is based on an integrated model of conspicuous consumption, social comparison, and impression management theory. The key variables are materialism, brand consciousness, status-seeking, peer pressure, and collectivism to predict the luxury consumption model with debt attitude introduced as a moderating variable to study consumer behaviour in this age group. A non-probability sampling method and 480 people were selected as research samples. Quantitative analysis was used in this study, and SPSS and Smart PLS were used as data analysis tools. Structural equation model (SEM) using partial least squares method was used to determine the relationship of the variables and the moderating effect of debt attitude. The results showed that brand consciousness, status seeking, debt attitude and materialism had the strongest relationship with luxury consumption. Debt attitude as a moderating factor has a significant impact on the hypothesized relationship of the model. This paper provides empirical evidence for research on Gen Z’s luxury consumption, which has practical implications to marketers, luxury companies, local luxury brands and credit institutions.

Sexual Self-Disclosure Styles: Understanding Differences in Discussing Sensitive Sexual Topics with Relationship Partners

ABSTRACT This study explored sexual self-disclosure styles. Using an online self-report survey, participants (n = 428) reported levels of conversational goals, disclosure-related variables, and likelihood to disclose a sexual topic to their romantic partner. Cluster analysis resulted in three distinct styles of sexual self-disclosure. A seasoned self-discloser is experienced and efficacious in their sexual self-disclosures. Relationally constrained disclosers report concern for secondary goals paired with avoidance-related contextual variables. Functional self-disclosers seem to use verbal disclosure as a preferred tool for managing sexual issues in relationships, with less regard for the secondary influences of impression management, identity, and relational goals.

I Care That You Don’t Share: Confidentiality in Student-Robot Interactions

Enabled by technological advances, robot teachers have entered educational service frontlines. Scholars and policymakers suggest that during Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), human teachers should remain “in-the-loop” (i.e., oversee interactions between students and robots). Drawing on impression management theory, we challenge this belief to argue that robot teacher confidentiality (i.e., robot teachers not sharing student interactions with the human teacher) lets students make more use of the technology. To examine this effect and provide deeper insights into multiple mechanisms and boundary conditions, we conduct six field, laboratory and online experiments that use virtual and physical robot teachers (Total N = 2,012). We first show that students indeed make more use of a confidential (vs. nonconfidential) robot teacher (both physical and virtual). In a qualitative study (Study 2), we use structural topic modeling to inductively identify relevant mediators and moderators. Studies 3 through 5 provide support for these, showing two key mediators (i.e., social judgment concern and interaction anxiety) and two moderators (i.e., student prevention focus and teacher benevolence) for the effect of robot teacher confidentiality. Collectively, the present research introduces the concept of service robot confidentiality, illustrating why and how not sharing HRI with a third actor critically impacts educational service encounters.

How altruistic alternatives reverse the compromise effect

AbstractBrand managers increasingly add altruistic product attributes, such as fair trade or charitable donations, to their products to account for consumers’ increasing expectations of altruistic brand behavior. Despite the extensive amount of altruistic product attributes in today’s markets, it is unclear how these attributes affect consumer decision-making in different contexts. This paper particularly examines the influence of altruistic product attributes on the compromise effect. Through five experimental studies, we provide pioneering evidence that consumers face general difficulty in accepting trade-offs involving altruistic attributes and that altruistic attributes change the compromise effect substantially. While the well-established compromise effect, predicting a preference for middle options (compromises) over extreme options, holds for trade-offs between utilitarian attributes, it diminishes for altruistic trade-offs. Moreover, the trade-offs between utilitarian and altruistic attributes reverse the compromise effect, i.e., leading to a preference for extreme options. We also demonstrate that impression management moderates this effect.

Emotion regulation in response to discrimination: Exploring the role of self-control and impression management emotion-regulation goals

Contending with discrimination can yield a cascade of negative psychological and physiological outcomes which adversely affect health. How individuals manage their emotions in response to discrimination can influence the extent of these negative health outcomes. Research finds, however, that Black and Latine individuals are more likely to use expressive suppression (vs. cognitive reappraisal) in response to discrimination, which is associated with adverse mental health outcomes. In the present research, we explored whether self-control (the ability to manage impulses and regulate thoughts, emotions, and behavior to achieve long-term goals) and impression management emotion-regulation goals (regulating emotions to shape others’ perceptions of one’s personality and skills) could help explain the differential use of suppression and reappraisal in response to discrimination. Across two cross-sectional studies, we found that Black and Latine participants’ everyday discrimination experiences were related to lower self-control and increased impression management emotion-regulation goals. Reduced self-control was, in turn, linked to less use of reappraisal, while impression management emotion-regulation goals were associated with both greater reappraisal and suppression use in response to discrimination. Reappraisal was also related to participants’ self-reported depressive symptoms. These findings contribute to our understanding of the factors that are associated with emotion regulation in response to discrimination.

The meaning of Black history: Development and validation of the Scale of Black History Consciousness.

This article describes the development and validation for a measure designed to assess the importance and meaning of Black history-the Scale of Black History Consciousness (SBHC)-in two independently recruited samples of African descent adults. After iterative exploratory (n = 350) and confirmatory (n = 366) factor analytic procedures, a 12-item measure, with scores of two internally consistent factors (sociopolitical beliefs and empowerment beliefs), emerged as the most parsimonious and psychometrically sound. An assessment of scalar measurement invariance using multiple indicators multiple causes modeling indicated that SBHC factors did not differ across racial-ethnic identification or generational status. Validity evidence was established through an examination of bivariate correlations of the SBHC factors with race centrality and impression management. Additionally, participants who endorsed being in environments where learning about Black history was emphasized reported higher SBHC scores than their counterparts who were not exposed to these environments demonstrating known-groups validity. These results provide initial support for the validity and reliability of the SBHC. Findings from this study advance scholarship about the psychological importance of Black history, and the SBHC can contribute to investigations of African descent adults' beliefs about the value of Black history in their lives. Recommendations for further scale development research and practice applications of the SBHC are also discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

External guarantees and ESG performance in China: Resource constraints or impression management?

External guarantees provided by listed firms are prevalent in China, influencing firms' motivations and capabilities concerning other business strategies. ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) represents a strategic imperative for companies aiming at sustainable development. Understanding how external guarantees impact ESG performance is essential for advancing the ESG agenda. This study examines the relationship between the intensity of external guarantees and ESG performance among Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2021. Our results consistently show a negative correlation between external guarantee intensity and ESG performance, impacting all ESG pillars and remaining robust through various robustness and endogeneity checks. The mechanisms underlying this impact include reduced resources, diminished stakeholder welfare, and hindered green innovation. The extent of this impact is influenced by environmental regulation, social trust, and market position while unaffected by the needs for impression management. These findings suggest that regulatory interventions in external guarantees could improve ESG outcomes, with significant implications for policymakers and corporate governance.

CSR awarding: A test of social reputation and impression management

Few studies have examined whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement, reporting, and report attributes help companies win awards and whether award winners continue to maintain their CSR efforts after being recognized. We address this gap by conducting an empirical analysis using social reputation, signaling theory, and impression management theory. The logistics regression analysis is based on a sample of 45,840 firm-year observations from various sectors and countries between 2002 and 2019. Our results show that CSR engagement, CSR reporting, external CSR report assurance, and adoption of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines all help companies win awards. Additionally, companies that win awards tend to maintain their commitment to CSR engagement, reporting, third-party CSR report assurance, and GRI adoption after being awarded. This finding implies that CSR-awarded firms do not consider CSR commitment and reporting a tactical commitment but rather a strategic purpose, ruling out the possibility of impression management.

Book Review Sair, A. (2024). Dramaturgi Politik Elektoral: Memahami Perilaku, Wacana, dan Motif Politik di Aras Lokal. Intrans Publishing. 148 pp.

This book offers a thorough investigation of political dramaturgy within the context of the 2010 Regional Head Elections in Surabaya. It spans six chapters, exploring the historical and theoretical foundations of political dramaturgy and providing a detailed case study of its application in Surabaya's electoral politics. Drawing on Erving Goffman's concepts of dramaturgy, the book illustrates how political interactions resemble theatrical performances, encompassing both "frontstage" and "backstage" elements. The backstage arena includes all the necessary preparations for the actors' performances on the front stage, ranging from research to logistical and technical requirements. In contrast, the front stage focuses on the actors' skills in impression management, which involve face-to-face interactions and the use of technology to effectively communicate political messages and influence public opinion. Overall, this book highlights the importance of dramaturgical elements in shaping electoral strategies and provides valuable insights into the complex interplay of cultural, social, and political factors that affect the dynamics of electoral politics at the local level.Keywords: political dramaturgy; regional elections; electoral politics

CEO Optimism on Corporate Risk Management: Evidence from China

Based on impression management theory and upper echelons theory, this study constructs an integrated mediating model involv-ing external investors. It aims to explore the impact of CEO optimism, a positive psychological advantage, on corporate crisis management performance. The research uses machine learning based on LSTM to analyze content text, measuring CEO displayed optimism. It also uses a Python program to crawl objective financial data and third-party objective reports after corporate crises occur, evaluating investor confidence and corporate crisis management performance. This study reveals the positive psychological advantage factors of leaders that enhance corporate crisis management performance and potential mediating mechanisms. It deepens our understanding of how CEOs improve corporate crisis management performance, provides practical insights for en-terprises and managers, and offers reference value for future research.

Studying the impact of profitability, bankruptcy risk, and pandemic on narrative tone in annual reports in an emerging market in the East

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the narrative tone of annual reports is influenced by profitability, bankruptcy risk, and pandemic in the context of Vietnam. The study applies the necessary regression analysis steps such as ordinary least squares (OLS), random effects model (REM), fixed effects model (FEM), and feasible generalized least squares (FGLS). Bootstrapping and System Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) methods are used to test the robustness and address endogeneity and dynamic relationships in the data. The findings show that net tones increase while negative tones decrease in companies with high profitability. Companies at risk of bankruptcy use more negative tone and less net tone than companies that are not at risk of bankruptcy. The study also affirms that bankruptcy risk moderates the relationship between profitability and negative tone. During the COVID-19 pandemic, companies used more positive and negative tones than they did before the pandemic. After the COVID-19 situation stabilized, positive tones were used more, and negative tones were used less than during the outbreak. The research results also recognized that companies do not intend to hide information through impression management when faced with difficult economic conditions. This study has practical implications for investors and information users when considering management disclosures through the narrative tone of annual reports. To our knowledge, this is the first study (1) in an emerging market in the East—where there are fundamental cultural and linguistic differences compared to Western countries, (2) to build a list of Vietnamese words and phrases expressing emotional nuances used in finance and accounting, and (3) refers to the narrative tone of annual reports across different groups of companies.

Social dynamics of luxury customization: The unique impact of name personalization

AbstractAs customized luxury becomes increasingly mainstream, adhering to a uniform treatment of all types of customization falls short of the nuanced insight needed. Our research focuses on the effects of a prevalent form of customization—name personalization—on the perceived “social cost” associated with luxury items from a potential buyer's point of view. Despite most luxury brands offering consumers the option to imprint their names on products for a personalized touch, concerns arise about being perceived to be “showing off.” Our four experimental studies demonstrate that adding one's name to luxury goods heightens apprehensions about the social cost, specifically diminishing metaperceptions of warmth due to impression management (Study 1). This phenomenon applies to both the imprinting of one's full first name, and only their initials (Study 2). However, luxury consumers with a lower social‐adjustive (i.e., less driven by the desire for social approval) show an elevated concern over the social cost of name personalization (Studies 3 and 4). As the trend of customizing luxury items rises, our findings emphasize the significance of luxury researchers and practitioners to discern both the positive and negative outcomes associated with various forms of luxury customization.

EXPRESS: Understanding Unitized Food Choice – The Role of Social Context and Marketing Factors in Mitigating Overconsumption

The unit bias, which asserts that consumption decreases as a food unit size decreases, is a prominent effect studied in psychology, health, and obesity research domains; yet, little is known about when or why this effect occurs, or how marketing plays a role in the effect. To address this gap in the literature, this research extends the current understanding of the unit bias by proposing the Social Unitization Effect (SUE), which posits that consumers’ selection of discrete unitized foods is dependent on impression management motives. That is, when impression management motives are low, consumers choose a greater number of small (vs. large) food units; however, in social (public) settings, when impression management motives are higher, this difference between small and large food units selected is attenuated. This effect is driven by a reduction in the number of small units selected when consumers are with others (vs. when they are alone). The research then demonstrates how the SUE manifests in various marketing contexts via marketing-related factors like servicescape design (e.g., in-store surveillance), food branding (e.g., branding food as ‘mini’), and food design (i.e., the shape of food units). These findings offer novel and actionable implications for marketers, health advocates, and consumers.

Posting to impress? Organizational impression management tactics multinational firms employ to showcase innovations supporting SDGs

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) play a significant role in promoting innovation and implementing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). MNEs have embraced social media use not only to promote themselves, but also to engage with various stakeholders. Using mixed methods such as Python programming scripts, big data analysis, text analysis and coding, this study explores Facebook (FB) communications specific to innovation and SDGs (ISDG). The study's findings suggest that only approximately 2.7% of the overall communications are about ISDGs. The frequency of ISDG communications varies by industry category and region, but public engagement only varies by industry. Additionally, the study found that MNEs predominantly use assertive organizational impression management (OIM) tactics in their ISDG communications. Our analysis also suggests that ISDG communications tend to focus on SDGs that impact positive externalities rather than negative ones. Overall, our findings indicate that slowly but surely most MNES are laying down the foundation for possibly adopting innovations related to the implementation of SDGs.

Corporate responsibility and corporate misbehavior: are CSR reporting firms indeed responsible?

Abstract We investigate whether firms that proclaim a commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR) by CSR reporting indeed internalize such a commitment and behave more responsibly. We analyze the association of the issuance and quality of voluntary CSR reports with the occurrence, number, and severity of corporate misbehaviors, both preceding and subsequent to CSR reporting. We find a significantly positive association of CSR reporting with our measures of prior and future misbehavior. The results are corroborated by a quasi-natural experiment around the Rana Plaza disaster where we find that the signatories of an accord for better working conditions have significantly higher prior and future misbehavior relative to non-signatories and firms unaffected by the exogenous shock. Our results are in line with legitimacy theory implying that, on average, the firms’ proclaiming commitment to CSR is not a signal of internalized commitment but more likely serves greenwashing and impression management purposes.

Filling in the missing pieces: Personality traits (un)related to dishonest behavior

Despite notable progress in the study of dishonest behavior and in particular the identification of personality traits (most notably, Honesty-Humility) that are robust predictors of individual differences in dishonesty, prior research has also left several traits untested or yielded inconsistent or inconclusive findings for other traits. We herein provide corresponding evidence, testing the associations between dishonesty and six operationalizations of Big Five Agreeableness, the dark tetrad traits, impression management and lie scales, and self-control versus impulsivity. We relied on a large dataset ( N = 1,916) across two incentivized measurements of dishonesty (separated by about 5 weeks) and tailored hierarchical modeling, and preregistered all hypotheses prior to data analysis. As expected, neither impression management and lie scales nor self-control versus impulsivity were related to dishonesty. By contrast, dark tetrad traits were consistently associated with dishonesty, though almost entirely due to their shared aversive core, the dark factor of personality. Finally, several (but not all) operationalizations of Big Five Agreeableness were associated with dishonesty, but none explained incremental variance above Honesty-Humility whereas the opposite was always the case. We discuss the implications of these findings for recent controversies about basic personality structure, the question of theoretical parsimony, and the dangers of jingle-fallacies.