Self-presentation Styles Research Articles

Effects of Self-Presentation Strategy and Tie Strength on Facebook Users’ Happiness and Subjective Vitality

The current study examines how strategic versus true self-presentation strategies affect Facebook (FB) users’ subjective well-being (SWB) depending on their tie strength with existing FB friends. Results of a two-experiment study of FB users aged 18 to 67 demonstrate that users report greater happiness (Experiment 1) and higher degrees of subjective vitality (Experiment 2) when adopting a strategic self-presentation style to post content on FB, rather than a true self-presentation style, while imagining weak tie friends as the target audience. When targeting weak tie friends, strategic self-presentation helps FB users fulfill relationship maintenance goals, which in turn enhances SWB. When imagining posts to strong tie friends, both strategic and true self-presentation strategies had similar effects on FB users’ SWB.

How First-Year College Women Construct Identity Through Cocurricular Involvement

This ethnographic study relies on a combination of participant observation and 43 in-depth interviews to explore how first-year college women construct identities in cocurricular settings. Findings indicate that students relied primarily on two gendered identity strategies to engage with peers in cocurricular groups. Some women presented as nurturing caregivers while others presented as amicable nice girls. Although these strategies facilitated a degree of inclusion, they also carried significant social and emotional costs. Efforts to police these gendered identities restricted college women to narrow styles of self-presentation. As peers demanded consistent performance of femininity, women were pushed to the margins of cocurricular groups.

Gould and Liberace, or the Fate of Nineteenth-Century Performance Culture

ABSTRACT Two of the most famous pianists of the 1950s, Glenn Gould and Liberace occupied opposing esthetic and cultural positions. Liberace’s style of performance and self-presentation was by and large consistent with his late nineteenth-century pianistic models; however, emerging television esthetics, among other factors, made this style increasingly incomprehensible, except as an extreme brand of musical kitsch or camp (the mode for which he became notorious). Meanwhile, Gould’s studied neutrality, which energetically deployed the period’s new media forms to cultivate a radical denial of the performing mechanism and the performing body, interpellated a generation of listeners who were not addressed by a musical rhetorician as much as they were invited to eavesdrop on, and to make their own, a self-possessed sound object. The story of Gould and Liberace thus not only sheds light on the new austerity of 1950s performance practice, but has something important to teach us about the ideological fate of nineteenth-century performance cultures since the late twentieth century.

Profiling personality-disorder traits on self-presentation tactic use

Social-personality and clinical perspectives have suggested that psychopathology has self-presentational features, but the extent to which this idea has merit is unclear. To advance understanding, participants (N = 247) completed indices of personality-disorder (PD) traits (i.e., negative affectivity, detachment, antagonism, disinhibition, and psychoticism) and indicated their past use of various self-presentation tactics. As anticipated, unique variance of antagonism and negative affectivity related to enhanced ingratiation, supplication, self-promotion, and accounting tactics, but unique variance of antagonism also related to enhanced blasting, intimidation, and reduced apologies; unique variance of disinhibition only related to reduced exemplification and apologies; unique variance of detachment related to reduced use of most self-presentation tactics; unique variance of psychoticism had only weak and statistically non-significant relations to self-presentation tactics. The present results provide novel insight into how personality pathology relates to self-presentation styles.

The impact of advertising self-presentation style on customer purchase intention

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to propose the self-presentation styles of advertising influence consumer self-image, which in turn influence purchase intention.Design/methodology/approachUsing virtual brands as stimuli in a series of experiments, this study collects data on consumer self-image and purchase intention in the conditions of different advertising styles.FindingsWhile consumer self-image mediates the relationship between advertising self-presentation style and purchase intention, the consumption situation (public vs private) moderates the relationship between self-presentation style, consumer self-image and purchase intention. That is, self-enhancing advertising promotes customers’ ideal self, which in turn increases their purchase intention for publicly consumed products, whereas self-deprecating advertising solicits customers’ real self, which in turn increases their purchase intention for privately consumed products.Practical implicationsThis study informs product/brand managers and marketers of the importance of aligning the self-presentation style of advertising with the consumption situation of the product being advertised.Originality/valueBased on self-consistency theory, this study not only finds a relationship between the self-presentation style of advertising and purchase intention, but also uncovers the mediating role of self-image in this relationship. Furthermore, the relationship chain of “self-presentation style of advertising – self-image – purchase intention” is moderated by the consumption situation of the product. This is one of the first studies to explore the intricacies of these relationships.

Shyness, self-presentation, adonization, and influence tactics in close relationships

BackgroundEmpirical research reveals the difficulties that shy people must face as part of their social functioning and at-taches a pejorative connotation to shyness in the process of establishing and maintaining interpersonal rela-tions. The purpose of the study was to investigate certain aspects of social functioning of shy people: the pre-ferred self-presentation styles, readiness to adopt adonization and influence tactics in intimate relationships.Participants and procedureThe study was performed on a group of 234 participants (113 females and 121 males), aged 18 to 35 years (M = 24.29). The following questionnaires were used: the Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale, the Self-Presentation Questionnaire, the Questionnaire for Measuring the Attitude toward Adonization, and the Influence in Close Relationships between Women and Men Questionnaire.ResultsThe study found that shy people use self-promotion less frequently than non-shy persons and they tend to adopt self-depreciation more often compared to non-shy individuals. Further, a high level of shyness implies a less pronounced tendency to use adonization but a greater readiness to employ hard social influence tactics in close relationships: Threats and violence, Silent treatment and sulking and Complaining and arguing.ConclusionsCorrelations between shyness, self-presentation styles, adonization and influence tactics in close relationships emphasize the role of this disposition in generating social behaviors. Shyness has a negative impact on an individual’s social functioning and relations with other people. The negative consequences of shyness are par-ticularly conspicuous in the behavior of men.

On the Margins of College Life: The Experiences of Racial and Ethnic Minority Men in the Extracurriculum

Today, racial and ethnic minority (REM) men complete college at lower rates and perceive a less welcoming campus climate than their white and female peers. Although these disparities in perceptions and outcomes are well-documented, we know less about how they are produced. Drawing on an ethnographic study at a four-year public university, I examine the experiences of REM men in the extracurricular realm of college. Findings illuminate how students become locked into narrow identity strategies in order to distance themselves from controlling images and conform to the demands of peers. These styles of self-presentation offer limited emotional dividends, making it difficult to feel a durable sense of belonging. Further, social class intersects with race and gender, shaping the capacity of REM men to navigate mistreatment and marginalization in the broader extracurricular landscape. This research has implications for scholarship and for efforts to support REM men in higher education.

Police Perceptions of Crime Victim Behaviors: A Trend Analysis Exploring Mandatory Training and Knowledge of Sexual and Domestic Violence Survivors’ Trauma Responses

Police perceptions of a victim’s self-presentation style can have an impact on secondary victimization, case processing, and public safety. Trauma survivors may present to police with flat or restricted affect, emotional numbing, and disjointed recollections. Often, police personnel have misperceived manifestations of trauma as indicators of reliability and credibility. Using a trend design, this study employed a sample of 979 police from one of the five largest U.S. cities to examine the relation between trauma-informed training and endorsement of trauma misperceptions. Multivariate ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models were estimated and revealed mean adherence to trauma misperceptions was significantly lower among participants who had completed training, controlling for demographic, occupational, and attitudinal variables. Implications and future research are discussed.

Adverse childhood experiences and multidimensional perfectionism in young adults

Theories and research have alluded to the role of adverse childhood experiences in the origin and development of perfectionism. Yet, there is a paucity of research on the links between perfectionism and various categories of childhood adversity or maltreatment (e.g., abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction). The aim of this study was to explore the associations between experiences of childhood adversity and multidimensional perfectionism. Data was gathered from 537 undergraduate students (19.39% male; Mage = 20.25). Results indicated that exposure to childhood adversity was associated with significantly elevated socially prescribed perfectionism and nondisplay of imperfection. Moreover, childhood experience of abuse (i.e., emotional, physical, and/or sexual) was a unique predictor of socially prescribed perfectionism and perfectionistic self-presentation styles. Childhood experience of family dysfunction was also positively associated with nondisplay of imperfection. The findings support theories and growing body of research underscoring the importance of early adversity or trauma in the etiology of perfectionism.

The “Tiny Hand” of Donald Trump and the Metapragmatics of Typographic Parody

Since his rise to the political stage in 2015, Donald Trump’s heterodox style of self-presentation has stirred heated metapragmatic debates within the American and international public: Was that “locker-room talk,” or abusive speech? Is his verbal irreverence an unacceptable defiance of fundamental principles of interactional ethics, or a brave attempt at reforming contemporary American speech by dismissing the epistemic inaccuracy and moral hypocrisy of political correctness? This article engages these debates by analyzing an ingenious form of typographic parody that recently appeared on digital social media. Modeled on Trump’s handwriting, the font “Tiny Hand” operates on multiple metapragmatic levels. First, the font’s childlike shapes establish an iconic connection between Trump’s hand(writing) and his brain, which, incapable of adult reasoning, generates dangerously infantile political decisions. Second, as a replica of Trump’s handwriting, the font parodies the president’s habit of correcting journalists with handwritten marginalia, thus speaking back to his attempts at silencing the press. Third, Tiny Hand works as a counter-meta-parody of the president’s political incorrectness. Finally, by evoking the parodies of Trump’s allegedly diminutive hands (and implicitly small penis) that circulated during the electoral race, the font operates as an inside joke addressed at and indexical of Trump’s counterpublic.

Self-esteem moderates the influence of self-presentation style on Facebook users’ sense of subjective well-being

This study examines the extent to which self-esteem moderates the influence of self-presentation style (true self versus strategic self) on Facebook users' subjective well-being, including measures of self-reported happiness and subjective vitality. To investigate this relationship, we conducted two experimental tests involving actual Facebook users recruited from Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk platform. The results of Experiment 1 indicate that the use of a true self-presentation style leads to greater self-reported happiness for high self-esteem users compared to low self-esteem users. By contrast, the use of a strategic self-presentation style results in more self-reported happiness for both high- and low-self-esteem users. Following self-determination theory, which emphasizes the importance of feeling effective in one's environment, a mediation test was further conducted in Experiment 2, demonstrating that revealing a true self on Facebook effectively satisfies the high self-esteem user's need for competence, thus explaining greater degrees of self-reported happiness.

Relations of Dispositions toward Ridicule and Histrionic Self-Presentation with Quantitative and Qualitative Humor Creation Abilities.

Previous research has shown that humor and self-presentation are linked in several ways. With regard to individual differences, it turned out that gelotophilia (the joy of being laughed at) and katagelasticism (the joy of laughing at others) are substantially associated with the histrionic self-presentation style that is characterized by performing explicit As-If-behaviors (e.g., irony, parodying others) in everyday interactions. By contrast, gelotophobia (the fear of being laughed at) shows a negative correlation with histrionic self-presentation. In order to further contribute to the nomological network, we have explored whether the three dispositions toward ridicule and laughter as well as histrionic self-presentation are related to humor creation abilities. In doing so, we have assessed the four constructs in a study with 337 participants that also completed the Cartoon Punch line Production Test (CPPT, Köhler and Ruch, 1993, unpublished). In the CPPT, subjects were asked to generate as many funny punch lines as possible for six caption-removed cartoons. The created punch lines were then analyzed with regard to quantitative (e.g., number of punch lines) and qualitative (e.g., wittiness of the punch lines and overall wittiness of the person as evaluated by three independent raters) humor creation abilities. Results show that both gelotophilia and histrionic self-presentation were positively correlated with quantitative and qualitative humor creation abilities. By contrast, gelotophobia showed slightly negative and katagelasticism no associations with the assessed humor creation abilities. These findings especially apply to the subgroup of participants that created punch lines for each of the six cartoons and partly replicate and extend the results of a previous study by Ruch et al. (2009). Altogether, the results of our study show that individual differences in humor-related traits are associated with the quantity and quality of humorous punch lines. It is argued that behavior-related or performative humor creation tasks should be considered in addition to the CPPT in order to open up new avenues that can cross-fertilize research on individual differences in humor and self-presentation.

Doing Masculinity

The aim of this article is to engage with unaccompanied migrant Maghrebi boys’ styles of physical self-presentation, “looks,” and hairstyles as a source of knowledge on the construction of masculinities. In order to observe such bodily expressive practices, we used general ethnographic methodology and, in particular, a workshop built around different artistic techniques. Since masculinity is inextricably defined in relation to specific agents and contexts, insights into unaccompanied migrant teenagers’ enactments of masculinity are dependent on (1) the collective imagination lying behind such “looks” and bodily images, (2) the discomfort and tensions created in the institutional communities in which these minors live—especially among social workers, and (3) the dialogue and relationships that emerge between the aesthetic and bodily expressions of these young migrants’ own culture and those of the other cultural groups that coexist, in our case, in a European city.

Verified: Self-presentation, identity management, and selfhood in the age of big data

ABSTRACTWhat new styles of selfhood and self-presentation, forms of social status, and arbiters of “authenticity” are being authorized and propagated in the wake of big data and affective capitalism? How are they functioning, for whom, and to what end? This article takes up these questions via an examination of a sought-after user identity badge, the Twitter verification checkmark, figuring it as both an affective lure that incentivizes specific styles of self-presentation and a disciplinary means through which capitalist logics work to condition and subsume the significance of the millions of forms of self-presentation generated daily. Beneath the promise of democratized access to social status and fame, the business practices of the social platforms in and through which we self-present draw us into privatized strategies of social sorting, identity management, and control. To conclude, the article will posit a new “ideal type” of selfhood for the big data age.

The role of humor-related traits and broad personality dimensions in irony use

As humor has pervasively been postulated as a function of irony, humor-related traits such as the joy of laughing at others (i.e., katagelasticism) or trait seriousness can be assumed to predict who is more and who is less inclined to use verbal irony—even beyond the possible effect of broad personality dimensions. For the present study, N=153 subjects made responses in two different irony use measures and completed personality questionnaires. As expected, irony use scores were higher among individuals who tend to break with social conventions, joyfully expose others' transgressions, or aggressively use ridicule (i.e., individuals scoring high in psychoticism, katagelasticism, or the aggressive humor style). Moreover, irony use was more prevalent among playful individuals who tend to entertain others by joyfully exposing themselves as the butt of jokes or engaging in as-if behaviors (i.e., low-serious individuals, scoring high in gelotophilia or the histrionic self-presentation style). Using a hierarchical regression analysis, it was found that over and above redundancy katagelasticism and—unexpectedly so—the self-defeating humor style predicted irony use beyond the influence of psychoticism. Accordingly, irony may also be seen a way to hide negative feelings behind humor and to avoid dealing constructively with problems.

23 Players, 23 Voices

This study’s purpose was to contribute to the understanding of athlete self-presentation on Twitter by focusing on the communication strategies of an entire team of female athletes during an international mega-event, with special attention given to how the athletes’ communication changed in the surrounding time periods. Content analysis was performed on tweets from all 23 players on the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team during 30-day time periods before, during, and after the 2015 World Cup. Findings revealed an overall tendency towards backstage communication, with some commonalities between the self-presentation styles utilized by individual athletes on the team. In addition, there were organic, intuitive changes in the players’ self-presentation across various time periods. Further, analysis of follower engagement via retweets indicated greater interest in athletes’ backstage communication compared to front stage. These findings yield implications for future research and practical application, which are examined in the discussion.

Dressing for the Culture Wars: Style and the Politics of Self-Presentation in the 1960s and 1970s

Often regarded as frivolous and superficial, fashion under certain circumstances performs an important social role by providing symbols that represent social tensions and conflicts. Betty Luther Hillman argues that fashion and style create a nonverbal discourse based on individual choices. During the 1960s, a period of rapid social change in American society, dress and hairstyles embodied these changes, and television disseminated them to the entire population. Social activists used personal appearance as a way of expressing “their disagreement with and alienation from American culture” (p. xviii). Other Americans interpreted this behavior as “signs of the demise of the gender, sexual, racial and middle-class traditions of ‘respectability’ they held dear” (p. xx). Based on documentary sources such as newspapers, magazine articles and advertisements, periodicals, papers of social movement organizations, court cases, photographs, and memoirs, the book shows how shifting styles of self-presentation played an important role in politics in the 1960s and 1970s. Hillman focuses her analysis on several social groups whose members changed their dress and hairstyles in the 1960s. Young, white, middle-class American men developed hair and clothing styles that led to generational conflicts. Black power activists adopted hair styles and African-heritage clothing which, in turn, influenced New Left and hippie countercultural activists protesting the Vietnam War. These movements produced a conservative backlash. Feminist and gay liberation movements used dress and hairstyles to challenge male and female gender distinctions. Hillman explores the social significance of unisex styles in the 1970s and changing media reactions to them.

Relations between explicit and implicit self-esteem measures and self-presentation

Three explicit self-esteem measures with different conceptualization and item content were compared with regard to their association with implicit self-esteem (SE) and positive self-presentation. The results revealed a pattern where affective–experiential basic SE appears to have more similarity with implicit self-esteem than cognitive–evaluative general SE measures. Basic SE was the only explicit SE measure that predicted significantly implicit self-esteem. Most of the self-presentational styles lacked association with implicit SE and basic SE but played a substantial role for the general SE scales. The results suggest the importance of considering self-report measures potential to tap unbiased self-esteem.

Self-presentation styles, privacy, and loneliness as predictors of Facebook use in young people

Facebook is an increasingly popular online platform for communication, entertainment, and information exchange. Recent studies have shown that there is a relationship between loneliness and Facebook use patterns. The main aim of the study was to examine whether the use of different types of self-presentation styles, the need for privacy, and loneliness are related to three aspects of Facebook use: standard Facebook use, addiction to Facebook, and entertainment. The participants were 550 individuals (mean age: M=19.86years, SD=3.06). We used the following measures: the Facebook Usage Questionnaire, the Self-Presentation Styles Questionnaire by Wojciszke, the Privacy Questionnaire by Pedersen, and De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale. The paper-and-pencil procedure was applied. Our results indicated that loneliness and self-promotion were positive predictors and the need for privacy was a negative predictor of Facebook usage. This study might open new perspectives on factors leading to addictive Facebook use tendencies.

Ladies, know yourselves! Gentlemen, fool yourselves! Evolved self-promotion traits as predictors for promiscuous sexual behavior in both sexes

Creating a convincing self-presentation which exalts one's own capabilities on the surface is often regarded as a crucial soft skill ensuring success in numerous interpersonal domains. Seen from an evolutionary perspective, strategic self-promotion might have evolved as a beneficial psychological mechanism in mating competition. While prior research is almost exclusively focused on different behavioral patterns, the present study examines relations between self-promotion and mating behavior on a trait level. Based on existing findings, we identified three different traits corresponding with determined self-presentation styles: impression management, self-deceptive enhancement, and self-monitoring. Using a sample of 232 heterosexual participants (f=143; age M=23.88years; SD=3.42years), we tested to what extent these traits predict sociosexual orientation as well as the total number of intercourse partners in both sexes. Notwithstanding gender, all chosen traits showed a positive prediction towards short-term mating behavior. By taking sex differences into consideration, however, the results indicated that self-deception was a stronger predictor for promiscuous mating behavior in men compared to women, whereas impression management showed minor differences and self-monitoring even revealed an opposite trend. These findings suggest that women may possess more rigorous deception detection mechanisms forcing men to apply subtler self-promotion strategies.