What is Self-presentation theory?

The self-presentation theory by Erving Goffman focuses on an individual’s want and need to control the impression that others have of them. This impression can be based on any aspect of an individual life, from reality to fictional, from physical to emotional, from social to mental.  

This theory can be split into two categories of self-presentation. The first is that of audience-pleasing self-presentation, and the second is that of self-construction self-presentation.  

---

Audience-pleasing self-presentation  

In its simplest form, audience-pleasing self-presentation is where an individual will change aspects of themselves from their interests, abilities and/or skills so that those around them will think more positively of them and will expect them into the social group, be that a friendship group, class or workplace.  

The way the individual enters the presence of others, they commonly seek to acquire information about them or to bring into play information about them already possessed. This allows them to assert some degree of control over the environment and situation by changing aspects of themselves in order to acclimatise. As well as the individual influences that those present changes foster, the environment often has a somewhat influential impact on the changes a person may make.  

With this in mind, audience-pleasing self-presentation is not fixed and will vary depending on the environment and people present. For example, a person would present themselves differently at a family dinner in a nice restaurant than when attending a party with friends. The audience-pleasing motives can even produce inconsistent or contradictory self-presentations with different audiences. For example, a person might present differently at the same party if in the presence of different social groups. This is often due to the performance involving only one focus on the performer’s part.  

Additionally, motivations for audience-pleasing self-presentational vary in strength as the audience’s power and importance, particularly about how much the self-presenter depends on the audience’s acceptance. Also, this is not always a conscious effort and sometimes can be an ingrained response that mimics and conforms to that of their environment or the presence of others around them. 

---

Self-construction self-presentation 

Unlike audience-pleasing self-presentation, self-construction self-presentation is more focused on portraying consistent characteristics across environments and audience and offer very little modification based on these. The key function of self-construction is the individual’s desire to claim a certain trait and uncertainty about whether one has it.

An interesting aspect of self-construction is that it is centred toward the audience, not toward making a favourable impression on them. It is just to be as having a specific characteristics.