Impression Formation and Management: There are six simple and general principles of forming impression about others.
- On the basis of minimal information, people form impressions of others quickly and they conclude about general traits about them.
- People pay attention to most salient features of a person that make a person distinctive or unusual, rather than to everything.
- The information processing of people is possessed by some coherent meaning in their behaviour and use context of a person’s behaviour to deduce its meaning, rather than interpret the behaviour in isolation.
- The perceptions can be organized by categorising stimuli i.e. rather than to observe every person individually. For example, people wearing stethoscope around her neck are doctors.
- The cognitive structure is used to make sense of people’s behaviour.
- The perceiver is influenced by his/her own needs and personal goals regarding to perceive others.
The mental shortcuts are the main reasons behind the formation of wrong impressions. While taking social judgement, people often ready to attribute other’s actions to their personalities rather than to the situation. Schemas are also responsible for the biased judgement. People use implicit personality theories to fill in the gaps in their knowledge about other people and use schemas or theories to infer why other people what they do. We are very much sure that our impressions are accurate while these may go wrong. The three reasons for this are:
1. We observe people in limited situations, thus never have the opportunity to see that our impressions are wrong.
2. We will not realise that our impressions are wrong if we make them come true.
3. We are wrong if a lot of people agree on what someone’s is like – even when everyone is wrong.
Impression Management (Impression Management- The Fine Art of Looking Good)
It is everyone’s desire to make their first impression favourable so everyone wants to look good in their first meeting. Social psychologists explain this by using the term impression management (or self-presentation). It describes the efforts that people usually do to make a good impression on others. The different techniques employed for the formation of their good image are self-enhancement and other enhancement. Self- enhancement includes the effort to increase their appeal to others while other enhancement involves the effort to make the target person feel good in various ways. The strategies used by the people for self-enhancement are related to the boosting of physical appearance through style of dress, personal grooming etc. and in addition the efforts to describe oneself in positive terms. With respect to the other enhancement, people use different tactics to induce positive moods and reaction in others like flattery.
According to the observation of William James, individuals exhibit their different sides to different groups of people. The modest and obedient youngsters may show their styles and swagger in the company of their friends. In the similar way, most of the parents do not present their image to their children as they do to their colleagues or intimate friends. We generally concern with the stable and well defined single self but social psychologists believe in multiple selves as people display different aspects of themselves in different situations. Schlenker defined it as ‘impression management’ i.e. the conscious or unconscious attempt to control images that are projected in real or imagined social interactions. When the image is concern with some aspects of self, it is known as self presentation.
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