Making a Good Impression Depends on Who You Want to Impress

In the psychology of impression management, it’s all about those first few seconds of an interaction. You know you’ll be judged, as you judge in turn, by what happens the moment you and a stranger see each other for the first time. However, did you realize that you may even form a judgement about someone’s personal qualities before you ever set eyes on each other?

In an online dating scenario, you have the complete freedom to describe yourself in any way you see fit. You may not be able to get away as much with manipulating your physical appearance though some people valiantly try. However, you can slant the way you present your personality and skills according to the effect you hope to have on your online audience.

Given this complete freedom, then, think about how you’d most like to present your personal qualities. Would you rather seem to be someone who others can come to for help because they trust your generosity of spirit? When you meet the individual you’re trying to attract, do you want that person to want you because you are so easy to get along with? Or is being smart and on top of your game the quality that matters the most? Do you want to attract potential dating partners who enjoy the mental give-and-take as much as they do any other types of pleasure?

In a previous article, I discussed the advantages and disadvantages of trying to seem nice vs. smart on the basis of your dialect. Southerners trade off seeming intelligent for seeming nice and those north of the Mason-Dixon Line give off intelligence vibes. Political candidates who want to seem likable, therefore, will put on a Southern accent (or exaggerate the one they have) and those who want to look like trustworthy stewards of your resources will go out of their way to drop the drawl.

When you’re not actually speaking to someone, though, you’ve got a different set of options. You can represent your personal qualities through the written word, either in a self-description or in your list of accomplishments. Whether you put “Homecoming Queen” first in your resume or “Honor Roll” is the dilemma you face every time you apply for a position, whether it’s in as an office assistant or a dating partner.

Impression management isn’t just a one-way street. The people who form their impressions of you themselves possess a certain set of qualities. These will influence how they judge your self-descriptions. It's important to take these into account when you ponder the words you'll use to gain their attention.

Deciding which qualities to emphasize, then, should be a conscious decision you make at the outset. For example, if you’re trying to get hired by someone who will serve as your boss, you’ll need to present an image that will emphasize your competence. This would be the promote mentality. If, conversely, you want the people beneath you socially to throw support your way (as happens to a political candidate), you need to emphasize the down-to-earth nature of your personality. This would be the ingratiate mentality.

A similar set of processes might occur in online dating where, if you are relatively high status as gauged by your academic credentials and/or job prestige, you’ll want potential partners to see you as approachable. If you occupy a lowlier position in society, again as gauged by your education and job, you’ll want to emphasize how great your personality is and how much people like you.

We typically think of the ingratiation process as one that occurs over a prolonged period of time. If you’re trying to ingratiate yourself with someone whose positive regard you need (either for a job or in a relationship), there are certain tactics you must always be prepared to use. You need to be attentive to their needs, willing to put your needs aside to satisfy them, and so sensitive to their wishes that you can provide answers even before they ask their questions.

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Sometimes people use ingratiation tactics as a means to secure a promotion. The underling who swarms around the boss, ready to meet every request, is hoping someday to be offered a better position. By appearing helpful and responsive to the wishes of the boss, the lowly assistant shows the kind of loyalty and dedication that must surely be deserving of a raise in pay and a better position in the office hierarchy.

Princeton University’s Jillian Swencionis and Susan Fiske (2016) were interested in impression management as it applies to situations in which two people of different statuses or ranks judge each other via written descriptions. They noted that we often judge people of high rank as “cold but competent” and those of lower rank as “warm but unintelligent.” These are, they observe “ambivalent” stereotypes where one positive attribute is offset by one negative attribute.

In a society as rife with economic inequity as that in the U.S., Swencionis and Fiske propose that people of lower income and status can feel better about themselves if stereotype those higher classes than themselves as cold even though they may be competent. If you’re wealthy, you regard the poor as dumb but happy. This makes it possible for the wealthy to ease their guilt about their lack of access the poor have to the resources available to them. If you’re poor, your stereotype of those better off than you allows you to rest assured in the knowledge that you may not have much, but at least you’re happier than those snobs at the top.

Now, the translation of all of this to impression management. According to this status inequity argument, ambivalent stereotypes will lead you, when presented with someone of a different class, to try to equalize the situation in the way you describe yourself. If you’re upper status, you’ll try to seem nicer (the ingratiation process). If you’re lower status, you’ll try to seem more competent (the promotion process).

Testing this theory on participants obtained through the online survey apparatus of mechanical Turk, Swencionis and Fiske conducted a series of studies in which people were asked to rate the impressions they formed from written descriptions of people presented to them as either higher or lower than themselves in status.

Summarizing a rather complex set of findings, it appears that downward comparisons (where you outrank someone else) produce a greater tendency for you to try to appear nice. Upward comparisons (where the other person outranks you) lead people to that promotion strategy of trying to look more competent.

The findings were additionally a bit more nuanced in that those who were made to feel higher in status seemed to want to show that they really aren’t all that cold as the stereotype would suggest. Conversely, those made to feel lower in status wanted to show that they were at least as smart as (not smarter than) the person who would be their boss.

Making the best impression, as this study suggests, is more than just looking as good as you possibly can to the target of your self-presentation strategy. The way you perceive your status, relative to that other person, will also influence the qualities about yourself you should plan to emphasize. Looking as competent you can could undermine your efforts if the other person feels out-ranked. Seeming as nice as you can may actually cause you to be seen as weaker to the more privileged.

The impression we make on others is crucial to our fulfillment. Taking into account the way you and the person you’re trying to impress see yourselves may provide that one key ingredient to making it all work for you.

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Copyright Susan Krauss Whitbourne 2016

Reference:

Swencionis, J. K., & Fiske, S. T. (2016). Promote up, ingratiate down: Status comparisons drive warmth-competence tradeoffs in impression management. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 6427-34. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2016.01.004