Kinesiology 1070A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Impression Management, Social Loafing, Social Desirability Bias
11 Jun 2018
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Self-presentation in sport
• Also called impression management
• Refers to the process by which individuals attempt to control the impressions others form of
them
Public vs private
• Maintenance of private self occurs at cognitive level (self is audience)
• Maintenance of public self is always overt behavior (others are the audience)
• Interest is the only factors that affect self-presentations to others
Primary Self- presentation goals
• Self-presentation may be used in three interrelated yet distinct ways
• maxiise oe’s ead-cost ratio--social and material outcomes
• self-esteem enhancement and maintenance--compliments vs. criticism
• development of identity--create and maintain a particular identity
Leary ad Kowalski’s two copoet odel
• Two discrete processes, each of which operates according to different principles and is affected
by different antecedents
• Impression Motivation--desire to create a particular impression
• Impression Construction--the kind of impression management tactics that are used to make the
desired impression
- How I go about creating the impression I have of myself
Leary (1992)
• Motivation to engage in sport (e.g., improve physical appearance)
• People’s choices of sport (e.g., chose activities whether they can present favourably)
• Quality of the athletic performance (e.g., choking and social loafing)
• Emotional reaction from engaging in sport (e.g., competitive anxiety)
Self-presentation research
Most research focused on two variables
- Self-handicapping
- Social Physique Anxiety
Self-handicapping
- A proactive attributional strategy that is sometimes used before performance to increase
personal responsibility for success and decrease personal responsibility for failure (Jones &
Berglas, 1978)
- Excuse making before an event
- altering the amount or quality of practice
- creating or exaggerating physical problems such as illness or injury
- focusing on real or imagined character flaws
Shows how important self-
presentation impacts sport
Unusual for people they have
serious self-presentation issues
when they participate in sports
and going to the gym
What happens if I don’t perform
well- choking?
I if you don’t present favorably-
can make one feel anxious and
choke
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Self-reported self-handicapping
• claims of being ill or injured
• socially anxious
• in a bad mood
• victim of a bad event
Berglas and Jones (1978)
- Students volunteered to take intelligence tests
- 70-80% answers were correct
- Half the people answered solvable questions(contingent) and the other half answered
unsolvable questions (non-contingent)
- Then they ingested one of these drugs
- Activil- enhance intellectual performance
- Pandocrin- inhibit performance
- As predicted subjects in the non-contingent success group self-handicapped (ingested the drug
Pandocrin) to a greater extent than their contingent success counterparts- so they could blame
the failure on drugs
Tendency to self- handicapping
• Rhodewalt (1990) suggested that self-handicapping tendencies vary across individuals and these
tendencies can be assessed with the Self-handicapping Scale (Jones & Rhodewalt, 1982)
• 25-item and 14-item short form
• Single or multidimensional construct (i.e., excuse-making and diminished effort)
*May ask what question refers to excuse making and diminished effort
Self- handicapped individual focusing on
Augmentation and discount
I say I will do bad- yet I do well (augmentation)
I say I will do bad- I do bad (discount)
- I didn’t expect to do well
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
