becomes particularly important when you are trying to obtain a job, a raise, or entry into college or graduate school (See the Social Psychology Applied to Work: Managing Impressions text box). Obviously, it is important to convince a potential employer that you are competent, and self-promotional strategies have been shown to accomplish that (Stevens & Kristof, 1995). As with ingratiation, there is a paradox of self-promotion: Truly competent people don’t need to claim it, because their performance should be sufficient to demonstrate their competence (Jones, 1990). In fact, self-promotion can sometimes backfire, especially for women, for whom norms of modesty are more salient (Moss-Racusin & Rudman, 2010; Rudman, 1998). Earlier we mentioned that people can use modesty as an ingratiation tactic (“I owe all of my teaching proficiency to my graduate mentors and colleagues!”). However, too much modesty might actually mask your competence—and if the modesty is seen as false, then liking may decrease along with perceived competence.
Social Psychology Applied To Work
Managing Impressions
As you know, people strive to ensure that others have favorable opinions of them. One domain of life in which positive impressions are particularly important is work—otherwise we wouldn’t be able to obtain, keep, or advance in our jobs. Social psychologists and others have extensively investigated how people attempt to manage the impressions they make during interviews as well as on the job (Barrick, Shaffer, & DeGrassi, 2009; Bourdage et al., 2015; Cialdini, Petrova, & Goldstein, 2004; Ingold, Kleinmann, König, & Melchers, 2015; Jones & Pittman, 1982). There are many strategies people may use to manage impressions, including providing answers that are more socially desirable than their true answers (e.g., stating that they like working in teams even if they don’t because they think the interviewer wants to hear this) or claiming skills and/or experiences that they do not have (Levashina & Campion, 2007; Roulin, Bangerter, & Levashina, 2015; Tsai, Huang, Wu, & Lo, 2010; Weiss & Feldman, 2006).
For instance, using three measures of faking, O’Connell, Kung, and Tristan (2011) found that job applicants were more deceptive than existing employees and that they also gave significantly more positive self-reports than did employees (see this chapter’s Doing Research text box). Levashina and Campion (2007) developed an Interview Faking Behavior Scale that could accurately reveal when individuals were faking answers during interviews. They learned that more deception occurs when people are asked about hypothetical situations (e.g., “Suppose you have a great idea, but there is opposition to it among your colleagues. What would you do to persuade your colleagues to ‘see things your way’?”) than past behavior (e.g., “Describe a time when you had a great idea, but there was opposition to it. How did you do persuade your colleagues to ‘see things your way’?”). Moreover, participants tended to fake their answers more when the interviewers did not engage in follow-up questioning after receiving the initial answers.
People of course differ in the extent to which they actively manage impressions. For example, it won’t surprise you that individuals who are relatively high on an honesty-humility personality dimension are less likely to engage in impression management (Bourdage et al., 2015). Extraverts have a greater tendency to self-promote and attempt to ingratiate themselves than do introverts, and more agreeable individuals also engage in ingratiation. Other research has shown that people who are actively managing impressions are also more prone to misrepresenting themselves on personality scales (Ingold et al., 2015). Guadagno and Cialdini (2007) conducted a qualitative review of the literature and concluded that men and women seem to manage their self-presentations generally in line with traditional gender roles. Hogue, Levashina, and Hang (2013) provide empirical evidence that men and women who are high in Machiavellianism (the desire to further self-interest regardless of the cost) more intensively attempt to ingratiate themselves than women low in it. Individuals who are concerned that their group membership may lead to negative impressions, such as gays and lesbians (Jones & King, 2014) and Asian Americans (Roberts, Cha, & Kim, 2014), often actively seek to manage their self-presentations.
I Failed But I Am Still Competent! Self-Handicapping
Most of us are concerned that a personal failure will be perceived as lack of competence, which can in turn damage self-esteem. One common way to ward off such threats to self-esteem is to have excuses ready to be rolled out. However, simply making excuses itself can be damaging, especially if used too often. Some people go one step further than making excuses, and that is to actually create obstacles to success so that, if failure occurs, they can protect their self by attributing the failure to something other than their own ability or competence (Jones & Berglas, 1978). This tactic, called self-handicapping, involves arranging events that may in fact reduce the likelihood of success but also serve to protect one’s self-esteem by deflecting responsibility (Gadbois & Sturgeon, 2011; Jones & Berglas, 1978; Park & Brown, 2014). For instance, partying the night before an exam gives a person an excuse for failing to perform well. Essentially one can say—both to oneself and others—that “I could have done better if I had stayed home and studied.”
Self-handicapping provides automatic cover for possible failure and the appearance of incompetence (Rhodewalt, 1990). Several years ago during a discussion of self-handicapping, one of my students (I’ll call her Julie) described how, as an outstanding clarinet player about to compete in the finals of a state competition, she decided not to practice the entire week before the event! Julie explained that she was worried that she would lose the competition and that she couldn’t cope with that failure. By not practicing, she would have a good way to explain her poor performance that wouldn’t challenge her competence. The key component of effective self-handicapping is that it essentially prevents attributions of incompetence by providing an external reason for the failure (Gadbois & Sturgeon, 2011).
There are many ways people self-handicap, including not studying, not preparing for competition or not practicing a task, using alcohol or drugs, or giving an opponent a head start in a race or some other advantage (Higgins & Harris, 1988; Rhodewalt, Saltzman, & Wittmer, 1984). There is an obvious downside to self-handicapping: Performance may in fact worsen and failure may become more likely. That is, by engaging in self-handicapping people may prevent the very success they hope for (McCrea & Hirt, 2001). Having an excuse for failure may protect self-esteem, but it is unlikely to boost it the way that success could.
In sum, an important aspect of the self is the interpersonal self—the one we present to others (Baumeister et al., 2007). Self-presentational concerns influence many of our social interactions: We strategically manage our impressions so that others will like us and think we are competent. We engage in a variety of tactics to do this, including self-monitoring, ingratiation, self-promotion, and self-handicapping. However, our impression management must be done in ways that are not too transparent, or they may backfire. In the next section we’ll elaborate on another important aspect of the self: how we control our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
Self-Handicapping: Arranging events that may reduce one’s likelihood of success but also protect one’s self-esteem by serving as excuses for possible failure
Think Again!
1 What are high and low self-monitoring? Are you high or low? Why do you think that?
2 What is the illusion of transparency?
3 When have you self-handicapped? Why did you do it?
SELF-REGULATION: CONTROLLING ONESELF
Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution to start a new, good habit (such as exercising) or stopping an old, bad habit (like eating fast food) that you have been unable to maintain? If so, you are not unusual, and you are likely to do it
