Impression Management

The term impression management is associated with the work of the influential post-World War II sociologist, Erving Goffman (1922–1982). It is central to his dramaturgical [Page 398]approach, as outlined in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), in which social interaction is analyzed as a set of theatrical performances. Impression management is an overarching term that characterizes the wide variety of strategies used by people to control the ideas others have about them. It is concerned with the general ways in which people present themselves in public settings. Goffman's work has fostered extensive research in the social sciences (see Brissett and Edgley 1990). Goffman described people as “sign-vehicles” about which others attempt to gather information. Interpreting this information is complicated because some impressions are planted or “given” by the person, while others are unwittingly “given off.” Successful impression management therefore involves two things: giving impressions that audiences falsely believe are given off and reading the different types of impressions provided by others. Goffman's dramaturgical work questioned what lay beneath the appearances of American society, and in this sense it contributed to what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur has called the “hermeneutics of suspicion.”

Impression management is critical if the prevailing definition of the situation is to be sustained. To this extent, all participants find themselves motivated to sustain each other's presentations of self, even in circumstances where impression management has failed. For this reason, impression management involves a concern for individuals, for the “teams” to which they belong, and to the audiences who observe their performances.

“Actors” or “performers” in Goffman's dramaturgical world are “sincere” if they believe in the parts they play or “cynical” if they do not. Their performances are bolstered by various “fronts” that are intended to sustain a sense of authenticity. These fronts consist of supportive “settings” that serve as stage props and the “personal fronts” of the actors themselves, a term Goffman reserved for all aspects of physical appearance. By these means, performers “dramatically realize” their performances. Audiences are left with an idealized view of not only the performer but of the character who is thought to be portrayed by the performance. This illusion can only be sustained through a process Goffman referred to as “mystification.” This describes the different means by which the audience is kept at some distance from performers, who can thereby sustain the performed illusion.

In one sense, impression management describes the performances given front stage by teams, performances which are “knowingly contradicted” backstage. In another sense, however, impression management may be an inescapable feature of all social interaction, and if so, the backstage team behavior is not itself any more real than front stage performances. Rather, it is simply different from and incompatible with front stage presentations of self.

Goffman emphasized that although impression management is often the preserve of the individual, it is also the case that individuals are often acting to preserve the impressions audiences have of the teams to which they belong. To this extent, impression management requires dramaturgical loyalty, discipline, and circumspection. These are necessary to “save the show” (Goffman 1959:222). It is also the case that an audience will often have to save the show itself—and will normally do so willingly. Goffman emphasized this feature of impression management because it reveals the investment that we all have in the staged production of social reality.

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