Читать книгу Essentials of Sociology - George Ritzer - Страница 140

When people interact with others, they use a variety of techniques to control the images of themselves they want to project during their social performances. They seek to maintain these impressions even when they encounter problems in their performances (Manning 2005). Goffman (1959) called these efforts to maintain certain images impression management.

For example, in your sociology class you might typically project an image of a serious, well-prepared student. One night you might stay up late partying instead of completing your required reading. When the instructor asks a question in class, you might try to maintain your image by pretending to take notes rather than raising your hand. Called on nonetheless, you struggle, in vain, to give a well-thought-out, serious answer to the question. The smiles and snickers of fellow students who know that you were out partying late the night before might disrupt the performance you are endeavoring to put on. To deflect attention from you to them, you might suggest that they try to answer the question.

Impression management relates directly to the plots of many movies. In the world of the 2014 movie Divergent (see also the 2015–2017 sequels, Insurgent, Allegiant, and Ascendant), most people live in one of five “factions,” while a few are relegated to a sixth group, “the Factionless,” which exists at the bottom of the social stratification system. Assignment to a faction is based, at least in part, on a test score, but some test results are inconclusive because the test takers defy categorization; they are “divergent.” To conceal their difference, which is generally considered unacceptable in their society, they engage in impression management. While all of us sometimes fail at impression management, the cost of failure to those who diverge—death—is much greater than is the cost to us in our social world.

However, in some cases—for example, Jews trying to pass as non-Jews in Nazi Germany—failure at impression management can have similarly dire consequences. While the idea of impression management is generally associated with face-to-face social interaction, it also applies to interaction on social networking sites. For instance, many people constantly change the pictures on their Facebook pages to alter the images of themselves being conveyed to others (Cunningham 2013). Others use social media platforms like Twitter to create personal brands, marketing their presentations of self to become popular or newsworthy (Brems et al. 2017).

Ask Yourself

What impression management activities do you undertake? Have they generally been successful? Do you see yourself performing more of these activities as time goes on or fewer? Why?

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