Self-presentational Goals Research Articles

Top managers' media selection and interaction goals in e-leadership

PurposeDrawing on media richness theory and a framework of interpersonal communication goals, this study investigates how and why the IT industry's top managers use communication media to achieve their interaction goals in e-leadership.Design/methodology/approachA qualitative research approach is applied to understand top managers' communication media use and interaction goals. The empirical data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 33 top managers from large IT companies and analysed using theory-guided thematic and ideal-type analyses.FindingsTop managers were categorized into three types, based on their communication goals through face-to-face communication. Relationship-oriented top managers pursued relational and communal goals, whereas task-oriented ones wished to achieve instrumental and communal goals. Task- and relationship-oriented top managers pursued relational, instrumental, and communal goals. This study indicates that communal, instrumental, relational, and self-presentational goals influence managers' communication media selection.Originality/valueThis study brings new knowledge to the management communication research field. It expands the framework of interpersonal communication goals by identifying communal goals as a new category, in addition to existing instrumental, relational and self-presentational goals. This study suggests that media richness theory could be advanced by recognizing that a broader set of communication goals – including communal, instrumental, relational, and self-presentational – influences managers' communication media selection.

Theorizing Self Visibility on Social Media: A Visibility Objects Lens

Self-presentation undergirds social interaction on social media. HCI and social computing scholarship draw on visibility to theorize self-presentation management; while research addresses how social media users leverage (in)visibility for self-presentation goals, how users perceive and assess the visibility of themselves and others merits investigation. We conducted interviews ( n =20) to explore how United States-based social media users perceive and assess self visibility. Findings indicate that self visibility comprises a set of related objects’ visibility—content, persons, and identity—associated with distinct, but related, visibility attributes. We develop the visibility objects lens to examine self-presentation, contributing a unified social media visibility framework. We show how users perceive themselves as visible to platforms and algorithms, which act as visibility agents. We introduce reflected algorithmic visibility to describe awareness of visibility to platforms and algorithms informed by algorithmic feedback. We conclude with design implications of a visibility objects lens.

Self-presentation in medicine: How language patterns reflect physician impression management goals and affect perceptions

This paper evaluated how physicians' communication patterns reflect their self-presentation goals and link to patient perceptions. Specifically, in a large field study (N = 54,420 profiles from HealthGrades.com), physician self-descriptions were analyzed linguistically through automated means, with evidence suggesting those who were more self-focused and confident tended to have higher patient ratings online than those who were less self-focused and confident. Physicians who discussed their expertise and compassion for patients were also rated more favorably. A within-subjects experiment in Study 2 (N = 500) also demonstrated that linguistic self-presentation patterns can affect patient perceptions. Participants who read physician profiles with high rates of self-references and verbal confidence rated doctors as warmer and more competent than those who read physician profiles with low rates of self-references and certainty. Together, words are indicators of physicians’ self-presentation strategies and can change patient evaluations. Theoretical contributions for self-presentation and psychology of language research are discussed.

Adaptive Folk Theorization as a Path to Algorithmic Literacy on Changing Platforms

The increased importance of opaque, algorithmically-driven social platforms (e.g., Facebook, YouTube) to everyday users as a medium for self-presentation effectively requires users to speculate on how platforms work in order to decide how to behave to achieve their self-presentation goals. This speculation takes the form of folk theorization. Because platforms constantly change, users must constantly re-evaluate their folk theories. Based on an Asynchronous Remote Community study of LGBTQ+ social platform users with heightened self-presentation concerns, I present an updated model of the folk theorization process to account for platform change. Moreover, I find that both the complexity of the user's folk theorization and their overall relationship with the platform impact this theorization process, and present new concepts for examining and classifying these elements: theorization complexity level and perceived platform spirit. I conclude by proposing a folk theorization-based path towards an extensible algorithmic literacy that would support users in ongoing theorization.

Depression and the Adoption of Faux Depression Symptoms: Novel Evidence for a Self-Verification Perspective

Research suggests that individuals who are more depressed are prone to behaviors that reinforce their depressive symptoms. We performed a novel test of the self-verification perspective of this phenomenon. In two experiments, nonclinical participants completed a sham color-gazing task in which depressed people ostensibly see colors become less intense (less-intense condition) or more intense (more-intense condition) while gazing at them. Depression related to perceiving colors as turning less intense in the less-intense condition and more intense in the more-intense condition. These effects of depression (a) persisted after controlling for proneness for nondepressive negative affect or gender, (b) likely occurred without awareness, and (c) were not attributable to accuracy goals or opportunistic self-presentation goals. Depression also related to self-reported increased likelihood of possessing depression characteristics and rating them as more tolerable, and mediation evidence suggested that responses on the color-gazing task partly drove these reports.

Self-Presentation in Social Media: Review and Research Opportunities

This paper reviews existing research on self-presentation in social media in order to inform future research. Social media offer seemingly limitless opportunities for strategic self-presentation. Informed by existing self-presentation theories, a review of research on self-presentation in social media revealed three significant context and audience variables that were conceptualized in a model. First, three affordances of social media – anonymity, persistence, and visibility – were discussed, as research has revealed the moderating effects of these affordances between self-presentation goal and the self-presentational content shared in social media. For example, one might expect that social media users are more likely to present their actual selves under conditions of less anonymity, more persistence, and more visibility. On the other hand, the freedom associated with more anonymous, less persistent, and less visibility social media may lead to idealized self-presentation. The second finding revealed the impact of other-generated content in the form of likes, comments, tags, and shares on social media users’ self-presentation content, mediated by how they choose to manage such content.The third theme concerned the moderating effect of context collapse on the relationship between goals and self-presentation content. The composition of an impression manager’s audience from one platform to the next varies across social media platforms, impacting and often complicating the attainment of self-presentation goals in the midst of merging networks of people. Social media users have adopted varying ways to navigate the complexities of context collapse in their pursuit of self-presentation. Although we have learned much from this body of literature, a more comprehensive theory of self-presentation in the hypermedia age is needed to further advance this area of research.

Sharenting and the extended self: self-representation in parents’ Instagram presentations of their children

ABSTRACT The sharenting practice, or the sharing of one’s parenting and children online, has become a popular topic of critical focus that decries it as an exploitative disregard for children’s privacy and rights. The practice is performed, however, by a population (i.e., parents) that is generally inclined to protect its children, raising the present research question of whether sharenting could be alternatively guided by self-presentational goals. Guided by the theoretical notion of the extended self, the present study qualitatively examines parents’ Instagram posts using constant comparative analysis to identify how parents self-present in their sharenting posts. The results identify three self-presentational categories that illustrate how parents’ social media posts that depict a parent–child relational identity may actually be intended representations of the parent’s self. Implications for theory are discussed, as well as practical implications for the appropriate management of parents’ identities in a manner that respects children’s rights and privacy.

Managing Earnings to Appear Truthful: The Effect of Public Scrutiny on Exactly Meeting a Threshold

The past two decades have not eliminated managers’ willingness to manage earnings to meet and beat earnings thresholds, but have increased investors’ skepticism of earnings that exactly meet those thresholds, providing perverse incentives to not meet earnings expectations exactly. Using a low-external-context experiment, we find that managers avoid exactly meeting a benchmark, even when they must alter true earnings and incur a monetary cost to do so. We manipulate the effect of intensified scrutiny of managers and find that when earnings exactly meet a benchmark, managers are more likely to misreport earnings when they report under high public scrutiny. This is particularly the case for managers who are sensitive to others’ perceptions (and thus low on the Dark Triad scale). Further, we show that this misreporting increases managers’ belief that the market will accept their reports, consistent with managers misreporting for self-presentational goals. Thus, we examine a new incentive to manage earnings: misreporting to appear truthful. These results help explain otherwise undetectable behavior around earnings benchmarks and are important as managers are increasingly scrutinized by critical media, activists, and political oversight bodies, and as they face skepticism via more intimate forms of disclosure and communication, such as social media.

Do Organizational Interests Interfere with Public Communication of Science? An Explorative Study of Public Relations of Scientific Organizations in Taiwan

The relevance of public relations (PR) efforts of scientific organizations for public communication of science is increasingly recognized. PR departments are not mere mediators between scientists and journalists but represent the stakeholder interests of their organizations in the public sphere and are communicative actors themselves. Previous Taiwanese studies focused on university PR in the educational context, whereas the potential function in the communication of research and scientific knowledge received less attention. This study explores how PR departments of academic organizations in Taiwan view their role in the public communication of science. Insights from eleven semistructured interviews with PR officers suggest that public relations departments of academic organizations in Taiwan only half-heartedly contribute to the communication of science. Another interesting finding is that even in the era of social media science, PR still relies heavily on journalism, which in Taiwan lacks professionalism in the communication of science. We suggest a more active role of academic organizations in the public communication of science, pursuing not only marketing or self-presentation goals, but also assuming genuine responsibility for public information about research and scientific knowledge.

Examining Characteristics of Opinion Leaders in Social Media: A Motivational Approach

Social networking sites offer various opportunities to express opinions on politics and public affairs and to disseminate information to a large circle of acquaintances. The present research aims to identify the characteristics of people who consider themselves as opinion leaders on these new channels, the features they use in order to influence others, and the psychological motives they pursue. A survey ( N = 527) among Facebook users identified political interest and personality strength as significant predictors of perceived Facebook opinion leadership, while the influence of extraversion was not significant. Those who write private messages on political debates do this in order to raise awareness of specific topics, while opinion expression in public status updates is also strongly connected to self-presentational goals (impression motivation). Moreover, the motives of presenting oneself positively and convincing others are particularly important for people with high personality strength. The present findings extend previous knowledge by redefining the concept of opinion leadership in new media environments and describing motivational links between individuals’ predispositions and their activities to influence others’ opinions. On a practical level, the pronounced role of self-presentational motives is likely to have important implications for the dynamics of public debates in social media.

‘Performing identity’

This study examined the issue of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) from the perspective of young adults. The focus was on how participants actively imparted meaning to themselves and others, and how they constructed and performed their identities through the situated interaction of the research interview. Students at the University of Cape Town (ages 18–25), were invited to participate in unstructured individual interviews and/or focus groups about IPV and intimate relationships. A total of 24 young adults volunteered to participate. The results revealed that young people are knowledgeable and concerned about IPV. Participants underscored the importance, intensity and timing of intimate relationships in their lives- and signaled its significance and consequence for their current identity projects. Female participants had specific investments in how their talk achieved selfpresentation goals: they used their narratives as a resource to account for their experiences, negotiate and present their preferred identities, and manage their reputations.

Self-Presentation, Individual Differences, and Gendered Evaluations of Nonverbal Greeting Behaviors among Close Male Friends

Individual differences influence both relational behaviors and third-party perceptions. This study extends research on perceptions of nonverbal greetings by analyzing personality characteristics, self-presentational goals, and cognitive processing in the evaluation of ritualized nonverbal greetings between men. 146 subjects watched one of two different videos showing male friends publicly greeting one another using either intimate or non-intimate touch. Results demonstrate the influence of nonverbals and the relative appropriateness of ritualized greetings. Participants were also increasingly distracted by intimate touch in the videos if they had stronger desire for heterosexual self-presentation, indicating stressors associated with an increased cognitive load. This study highlights influences of gender orientation, self-presentation, and nonverbal norms upon both observer's cognitive processing and one's subsequent attitude towards relational behaviors.

The Nature and Dimensions of Achievement Goals: Mastery, Evaluation, Competition, and Self-Presentation Goals

The present study aimed to clarify the nature and dimensions of achievement goals and to examine structural differences in students' goals across school levels. Participants were 134 students from 5th and 6th grades, and 423 students from 7th to 9th grades. A variety of achievement goals were assessed, including mastery goals and several performance-related goals representing three main dimensions: competition, self-presentation, and valence. Two alternative models were tested, using confirmatory factor analysis. For middle-school students a three factor model with presentation, competition, and simple evaluation/mastery goals, was found χ²(132, N = 134) = 160.9, p < .001; CFI = .94; RMSEA = .04, 95%CI [.02 - .06]. In the junior-high sample, one avoidance factor, one competition factor, and a simple evaluation/mastery factor, best fitted the data χ²(114, N = 423) = 269.8638 p < .001; CFI = .93; RMSEA = .06, 95%CI [.05 - .07] thus suggesting that distinct dimensions organize younger and older students' motivation. However, common to both grade levels was the existence of (a) separate but low incidence competition goals, and (b) simple evaluation goals, which encompass neither self-presentation nor competition, and are closely linked to mastery goals. Moreover, significant differences were found in the relative importance attached by students to the different types of goals (p < .001 for all comparisons), both at middle-school F(2, 266) = 220.98; p < .001; η2 = .624) and at junior-high school F(2, 820) = 464.4; p < .001; η2 = .531.

Interaction goals in the primary care medical interview

To examine the extent to which nurse practitioners (NPs) pursue three supraordinate goals (instrumental, relational, and self-presentational) in their interactions with patients in the primary care medical interview. One hundred three NPs representing a variety of specialties who responded to open-ended survey. A content analysis of 590 goal statements listed by respondents resulted in the generation of seven basic level instrumental goals (global/general health care issues; diagnostic/assessment issues; treatment/plan of care issues; information-gathering; information-giving; information-verifying; and resource management); four basic level relational goals (relationship-building; compliance-gaining; anxiety management; and identity management); and three basic level self-presentational goals (establishing expertise; demonstrating professionalism; and demonstrating compassion). Primary care medical interviews are recurring events that can produce automatic or habitual communication that may not be optimal for patient care. Training sessions that enable NPs to observe themselves and others in interactions with patients can improve NP ability to recognize and attend to the multiple goals in effect at given point. Ultimately, this goal-oriented approach to interaction should generate more efficient, productive, and satisfying primary care medical interviews for both the NP and the patient.

Students' Perceptions of E-Mail Interaction During Student-Professor Advising Sessions: The Pursuit of Interpersonal Goals

This study investigated students' preference for e-mail over face-to-face (FtF) communication for interpersonal goal achievement (i.e., instrumental, relational, self-presentational) with faculty advisors. An exploratory analysis of undergraduate students revealed that they did not prefer computer-mediated communication (i.e., e-mail) over FtF communication with advisors when addressing all 3 interpersonal goal types. Significant gender differences were also found, with women reporting more use of e-mail, and men preferring to address self-presentational goals in FtF settings. It also was found that compared to Caucasians, African Americans did not prefer CMC to FtF interaction in achieving instrumental and self-presentational goals. Results of this study suggest that despite the ubiquity of e-mail communication, undergraduates did not prefer e-mail over FtF contact with faculty advisors.

The “me” I claim to be: Cultural self-construal elicits self-presentational goal pursuit.

In 12 studies, respondents with an independent (vs. interdependent) self-construal showed an increased tendency and readiness to present themselves as skillful and capable and a decreased tendency and readiness to present themselves as socially sensitive and appropriate. This emerged in the form of differential scores on direct measures of self-presentation-self-deceptive enhancement and impression management (Study 1), differential social sensitivity in a gift-giving scenario (Study 2), differential performance on questions assessing general knowledge (Studies 5-6) and etiquette (Studies 7-8), and different choices between tests purportedly measuring one's self-reliance versus social-appropriateness (Studies 9A and 9D). These relationships were observed when participants focused on their own self-presentational concerns but disappeared when participants focused on others' outcomes (Study 3) or when they had a prior opportunity to satisfy their goals via self-affirmation (Studies 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9B, 9D). Finally, self-construal effects were eliminated or reversed when participants were led to doubt their ability to achieve their self-presentational goals (Study 9C).

Contingencies of self-worth and responses to negative interpersonal feedback

The present research examined effects of receiving negative interpersonal feedback on state self-esteem, affect, and goal pursuit as a function of trait self-esteem and contingencies of self-worth. Two same-sex participants interacted with each other and then received negative feedback, ostensibly from the other participant, or no feedback, regarding their likeability. Participants then reported their state self-esteem, affect, and self-presentation goals—how they wanted to be perceived by others at the moment. Among participants who received negative feedback, those who more strongly based their self-worth on others' approval experienced lower state self-esteem, positive affect, and greater negative affect than those whose self-worth was less contingent on others' approval. Participants with low self-esteem showed greater desire to appear physically attractive to others the more they based self-worth on others' approval and received negative feedback. In contrast, participants with high self-esteem showed greater desire to appear warm/caring/kind the more they based self-worth on others' approval and received negative feedback. Implications for self-esteem, motivation, and interpersonal processes are discussed.

Contingencies of Self-Worth, Academic Failure, and Goal Pursuit

Two studies examine the effects of failure on explicit and implicit self-esteem, affect, and self-presentation goals as a function of people's trait self-esteem and academic contingency of self-worth. Study 1 shows that participants with low self-esteem (LSE) who receive failure feedback experience lower state self-esteem, less positive affect, and less desire to be perceived as competent the more they base self-worth on academics. In contrast, participants with high self-esteem (HSE) who strongly base self-worth on academics show a slight boost in state self-esteem and desire to be perceived as competent following failure. Study 2 shows that following failure, academically contingent LSE participants downplay the importance of appearing competent to others and associate themselves with failure on an implicit level. Taken together, these findings suggest that academically contingent HSE people show resilience following failure, whereas academically contingent LSE people experience negative outcomes and disengage from the pursuit of competence self-presentation goals.

Self-presentational success in daily social interaction

In a study on self-presentation in everyday social encounters, 100 undergraduate students described their social interactions for two weeks using a variant of the Rochester Interaction Record. For each interaction, participants described their self-presentational goals and perceived success in achieving these goals. A series of multilevel random coefficient modeling analyses found that wanting to be liked was a particularly important goal. Moreover, goals and perceived success depended strongly on the type of situation people were in. For example, people wanted to appear competent during work-related interactions but interesting and attractive during romantic interactions. Overall, participants were relatively satisfied with their self-presentations. Self-presentational goals were more important in interactions with close others (family and friends) than with strangers or acquaintances. Furthermore, interactions with close others were considered especially successful. Participants felt least successful about their self-presentational performance during work related interactions and most successful about their performance during romantic interactions. Overall, social goals were more important than performance goals, and more of the variance in aspirations and perceived success was within-person (i.e., across interactions) than between-persons.

Social-identity functions of attraction to organizations

This article examines the self-presentation goals that underlie attraction to organizations. Expanding on Lievens and Highhouse’s (2003) instrumental vs. symbolic classification of corporate attributes, a theory of symbolic attraction is presented that posits social-identity consciousness as a moderator of the relation between symbolic inferences about organizations (e.g., this company is dynamic and innovative) and attraction to those organizations. A measure of social-identity consciousness is developed, and a series of studies confirmed two dimensions, labeled concern for social adjustment and concern for value expression. Preliminary evidence supports the validity of the measure and its role in moderating attraction to symbolic features of well-known firms.