The Impact of Self-Presentations on Self-Appraisals and Behavior: The Power of Public Commitment

Abstract

Strategic self presentations can have a far-reaching impact on an actor's identity. Subjects who presented themselves as sociable to an interviewer, compared with those who did not present themselves, later raised their self-appraisals of their own sociability, behaved more sociably (i.e., spoke sooner, more frequently, and longer) in a different situation, were viewed as more sociable by a confederate and by judges, and recalled personal experiences that indicated they were more sociable. Strategic self presentations thus produced both a phenomenological and a behavioral carry-over that influenced the actor's identity in a new situation with a new audience. Two further experiments explored the processes responsible for these effects and found that private self-reflection was not sufficient to produce the changes. Rather; public commitment to the identity portrayed in the self-presentation was a crucial antecedent of changes in self-appraisals.