Impression Management

Impression management is the strategic action of controlling information about a person, entity, or idea. Impression management is not an inherently deceptive practice; rather, impression management is an attempt to portray and claim a desired image in social interactions. When the images claimed are personally relevant, impression management is known as self-presentation.

Impression management is an important theoretical framework for the study of social psychology. It derives from the work of Erving Goffman, whose 1959 work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life crystallized the dramaturgical view of sociology, which holds that social interaction between individuals is best understood through the metaphor of actors performing for audiences. Individuals, like actors, want audiences to interpret their actions in particular ways. However, audiences often interpret a performance differently than the actor intended. Impression management expands upon the life-astheater analogy, studying how individuals seek to influence the reactions of both real and imagined audiences regarding all aspects of their lives. Impression management counts the “self” as a most important audience for every actor's performances; people come to learn who they are as they observe their own actions.

Impression management offers an important theoretical framework for the study of political roles and political campaigns. Barry Schlenker, author of one of the seminal works in the field, Impression Management (1980), suggests that public impression management is central to the successful claim of political roles. He discusses Richard Nixon's Man in the Arena programs to illustrate the way in which television allows politicians to claim desirable images for themselves, whether authentic or not.

Political advertising represents a very direct form of impression management for political candidates. In contrast to news coverage, advertising allows politicians to completely control their “performance” for key audiences. Through advertising, politicians and their organizations seek to claim specific images. Lynda Lee Kaid and Anne Johnston's book, Videostyle in Presidential Campaigns: Style and Content of Televised Political Advertising (2001), offers a detailed account of the mechanics of impression management in political advertisements, detailing both the rhetorical strategies and “props” that are have been used by presidential candidates to claim their desired image: president of the United States.

In his book Self-Presentation (1996), psychologist Mark Leary discussed the significance of role playing to successful impression management in politics. As “actors,” each individual has a very specific role to play. Job titles like police officer, professor, and politician all evoke specific “prototypes” from audiences. The more an individual's behavior corresponds with the prototypes associated with a particular role, the more the audience finds the person credible in that role. Behaviors that do not correspond with prototypes lead to audience skepticism in the actor's ability to adequately perform a desired role.

Because of the nature of their roles, politicians must perform in very public fora. In fact, politicians rely on mass media to deliver their performances to important constituencies. However, mass media can both help and hinder politicians' efforts to claim desired images. Deviations from accepted prototypes, such as Howard Dean's much publicized “Dean Scream” following the 2004 Iowa caucuses, can have devastating effects on the public's belief in an individual's fitness for a particular role. The media replays of Dean's decidedly unpresidential yowl resulted in wide-scale withdrawal of audience support for his desired political role, and his presidential bid came to an end.

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