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First Impressions

Which of the 5 Impression Management Profiles Describes You?

New research suggests why you don't always have to lie to be liked.

Key points

  • Making a good first impression is an important step toward getting what you want out of life.
  • New research identifies the strategy most likely to fit your personality and most likely to work.
  • Honesty rather than charm is your best bet for getting both the outcome and fulfillment you seek.

Great opportunities sometimes come your way, and when they do, you’d like to make sure the opportunity turns into reality. When those opportunities require that you do your best to impress someone you’ve never met before, you obviously would like to seal the deal. As you think back on the times you’ve put yourself on the line through an actual interview or just a first meeting, what approach are you most likely to put into play now? And will it work?

The Psychology of First Impressions

Much of the first impression literature in psychology centers around scenarios in which people try to manipulate their image to put their best foot (or face) forward. Job interviews present the classic situation in which people want to seem “hireable.” The applicant is highly motivated to look good, and even an honest person can be tempted to engage in a bit of image manipulation. The advice given to job-seekers, or anyone wanting to get a desired outcome (such as a college applicant) often incorporates specific steps that people should take, such as wearing the right clothes, making good eye contact, and sitting still rather than fidgeting or appearing nervous.

According to University of Calgary’s Benjamin Moon and colleagues (2024), the literature on impression management (IM) misses the mark by trying to identify individual factors that predict a job applicant’s behavior (and success). Instead, perhaps it would make more sense to put all of the factors together in one bundle or profile. After all, when you put yourself in a position of meeting someone for the first time, your presentation reflects a combination of multiple factors. As Moon et al. note, “applicants may use multiple IM tactics at the same time to convey a self-presentational persona consisting of several dimensions… looking at (them) in isolation may not be in accordance with how applicants actually use IM in interviews.”

Think about your own IM approach. When you prepare to meet someone new, you won’t just rely on eye contact, clothes, or body language as separate qualities to monitor. What’s more, the choices you make won’t be identical to those made by others. The U. Calgary researchers believe that your personality will play a key role in determining what strategy you ultimately decide to use. Socio-analytic theory predicts, in the Moon et al. analysis, that your wish to provide a certain impression will “drive personality trait expression.”

5 Impression Management Profiles (and Which Ones Work)

Across two samples, one undergraduate (N=523) and one online adult (N=1060), Moon and his collaborators measured IM tactics, personality traits, and cognitive ability. Students participated in a mock interview, and the online sample reported on the outcome of their most recent job interview (resulting in a sample size of 1042).

The measure of IM tactics fell into the three categories of self-promotion, ingratiation, and defensive, with honest and deceptive forms within each. Here are examples (you can rate yourself on a 1-to-5-point scale for each):

Honest self-promotion (HSP): I made sure the interviewer knew about my job credentials.

Deceptive image creation: I distorted my answers to emphasize what the interviewer was looking for (DSIC; slight deception); I invented some work situations or accomplishments that did not really occur (DEIC; extensive deception).

Honest ingratiation (HIN): I discussed interests I shared in common with the interviewer.

Deceptive ingratiation (DIN): I complimented the organization on something, however insignificant it may actually be to me.

Honest defensive (HDE): I shared my past regrets about how I handled certain situations and how I would improve in the future.

Deceptive image projection (DIP): When asked directly, I did not mention some problems I had in past jobs.

To measure personality, the authors assessed the six “HEXACO” traits of honesty-humility (H), emotionality (E), extraversion (X), agreeableness (A), conscientiousness (C), and openness (O).

Now that you have some idea of how these IM tactics translate into actual interview behavior, it’s time to move on to the five IM profiles the authors developed from the IM, personality, and cognitive measures. Again, see if you can spot yourself in these profiles from the abbreviations and brief descriptions:

Straight-shooter: High HSP, high H, C, E. (18 percent)—honest, reliable, and outgoing.

Naïve deceivers: Low HSP, high H, low X, A, C, O (7 percent)—not very honest, but not very engaging, reliable, or nice.

Charmers: High HIN, high X, C (37 percent)—try to find a common bond with the interviewer, outgoing, and reliable.

Extreme deceivers: High DEIC, low H, X, and very low C (28 percent)—blatantly willing to lie, outgoing, and not reliable.

Restrained deceivers: Low DEIC, moderate DIN and DIP; low H, moderate E, and low A (11 percent)—willing to tell little lies, somewhat outgoing, but not very nice.

As you can see, the charmers won out in prevalence, but the extreme deceivers were not far behind. In terms of cognitive performance, the straight-shooters outdid everyone else, and the extreme deceivers scored lowest. When it came to outcomes, the charmers (71 percent) and extreme deceivers (75 percent) were most likely to get a second interview, but it was the straight-shooters (58 percent) and charmers (58 percent) who were most likely to get a job offer. As the authors concluded, “Charmers seem to be successful in the short- and long-term.”

There were other interesting implications from these findings, with those naïve deceivers deserving of special mention. These are the people who don’t lie very often, but when they do, they “lie big.” Restrained versus extreme image deceivers were also an interesting comparison, with the restrained variety more likely to “have a line they will not cross.”

Putting Your IM Profile to Work

You now know that the most common job seeker is the one who will try to charm you, although close behind are those willing to commit the “big lie.” This is perhaps somewhat disturbing as you contemplate who it is you will choose the next time someone tries to impress you. Rather than take people at face value, then, it’s worth doing a little probing because, as the outcomes showed, the extreme deceiver will ultimately be found out. Given that you probably would prefer to hire a straight-shooter, the Moon et al. results suggest that you do a little background checking.

Although developed in a job interview context, the findings can also extrapolate to other situations where you want to see, or be seen, in the best and truest light possible. As you may know from hard-won experience, people will try to impress you as a potential dating partner or as someone trying to sell you something, and, at times, it might be you in the hot seat.

When it comes to your own IM strategy, these findings further suggest that you don’t have to lie to be liked. Some of that “honest” ingratiation won’t necessarily hurt, as the charmers were the ones with the best outcomes. If your instincts tell you to put on a massively false front or fake something about your background, you might want to do a little soul-searching to figure out why you feel you can’t present yourself as you really are.

To sum up, tagging your IM profile can be an important step in figuring out what face you want to present to the outside world. A straight-shooter might not always get the job right away but, in the long run, might this be the better path to fulfillment?

References

Moon, B., Daljeet, K.N., Bourdage, J.S. et al. (2024). Impression Management Profiles in Job Interviews: Relations with Applicant Individual Differences and Interview Outcomes. Journal of Business Psychology 39, 849–870. doi: 10.1007/s10869-023-09918-3

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