ABSTRACT
Self-presentation is the act of strategically revealing, concealing, and editing the self, sometimes deceptively, in order to convey a desired impression to an audience (Leary & Kowalski, 1990). For instance, people routinely attempt to come across as competent to bosses, witty or entertaining to friends, or physically attractive to romantic interests. As these examples show, self-presentation has an explicit social function, in that people attempt to exert interpersonal inuence by convincing audiences of their qualities. Additionally, self-presentation has a less obvious but essential identity construction function, in that people gure out who they are and how they feel about themselves by crafting public images and observing their audience’s responses (Schlenker, Dlugolecki, & Doherty, 1994; see also the chapter by Slater and Cohen in this volume for a discussion of the eects of ctional media content on media users’ self-concept). Indeed, attempting to impress an audience has been shown to induce changes in people’s self-concepts and self-esteem (e.g., Kelly & Rodriguez, 2006; Tice, 1992).
