And so we ourselves are in effect many different selves, and there seems to be no limit to the new faces we can make in new worlds that we meet. The ' self' becomes a ' construct' which alters with performance, and with each new set of characters or scene we met. Instead of looking inward only it was necessary to see the way we reshape ourselves in response to the kind of people we are with.
I remember reading this work many years ago and feeling a whole new world had opened up to me in relation to understanding ' the self'. A study which will interest all those who would like to know what phenomena occur during a variety of social interactions. The author distinguishes four types of communication out of character: staging talk, team collusion, treatment of the absent and realigning actions.
In the absence of the other, with a third party, belittling and criticism - secret derogation - often take place and is even in many cases a source of contentment. Social distance usually leads to a process of mystification whereas excessive familiarity may breed contempt. A slight error or off key note can disrupt an entire performance and of course the performer can act so as to dupe or misguide his audience in which case self-deception is not excluded. Performers tend to offer their observers an impression that is as positive as possible, mostly even idealised. Everyone more or less consciously is always playing a role, is always presenting a personal front which is both behavioural and material - clothing, size, posture, hair, make-up and gesture. We all perform in front of others and we expect that others believe the performance we deliver. Each participant is expected to suppress his feelings and to convey a view of the situation which he feels the others will at least temporarily find acceptable. This process is called impression management and it occurs in practically every social interaction. Usually the individual mobilizes his activity in order to convey an impression to others which it is in his interest to convey. We try to reflect the aspects of our identity that we wish to communicate, and they also show our intentions.In this valuable study Dr Goffman examines what happens when an individual appears in front of others. Whether we seek to like, please, sympathize, be hated … we all try to be consistent with the intended image.įor Goffman, and always under the prism of his social action theory, what we really want is to create impressions that form public disturbances, because we think that these disturbances will be beneficial for us. It seems obvious to believe that Goffman is right in this detail, because we all try to project an image favorable to others. We could say that we are actors playing our role in front of an audience of one or more people. In this way, we try to handle the impressions that others are going to form about us. This interaction that each individual performs with his environment pushes him to seek the definition of each situation with the aim of achieving control over it. Therefore, we are all immersed in a constant handling of our image before the rest of the world. As we have said, he defends the theory that human behavior depends on personal scenarios and relationships. We now enter into the subject of Erving Goffman‘s social action theory. The social action theory by Erving Goffman From his work arose theories about social interactions and the place that each person takes in a social hierarchy.ĭuring his active period, he published several prestigious books, such as Stigmas (1963), Public Relations (1971) or The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life (1957).
Throughout his professional career, he devoted much of his energy to observing human behavior.